This week
does not bring much in the way of excitement to the polling discussion. Hillary
Clinton leads by 6.1 points in the RCP average 48.4 to 42.3%, a slight upward tick
from last week’s Clinton lead of 5.5 points.
What is beginning
to seem important is that the four-way-race polling is showing a closer race.
Clinton’s RCP average lead there is only 4.4 points, 42.5% to 38.1% with 8% for
Johnson and 3% for Stein. A 4.4 lead is still larger in a four-way race than it
would be in a two-way race, but probably not quite enough to not make the two-way
look like a better number for Clinton. For example, if one candidate is up
46-40, but there are still 14% undecided than the trailing candidate needs 72%
of the undecideds to catch up. If the race is 44-40 but 8% are for third party
candidates than instead of needing 72% of the undecided vote to catch up, the
trailing candidate needs 75%. Those numbers aren’t that different. This means that
Clinton’s two-way and four-way leads are in fact closer to each other than it
would appear.
Probably the
best measure of where the race is now is a rubric like this. Clinton seems
certain to get 40% of the vote as she has almost never polled below that. Trump
seems to be a lock for 35% of the vote, this leaves about 25% who are making up
their minds from options about which they are not overly pleased.
So far that
25% is mostly having a near null effect with maybe the slightest of edge to
Trump in a four-way match up and the slightest advantage for Clinton in a two-way
match up. So long as that remains the
case, Clinton has relatively smooth sailing. But if this 25% decides in the end
that Clinton is the more odious choice then and only then will she run into
problems.
To overcome
the current gap Trump will need 60% of the 25% undecided, a heavy lift because
at the moment no one in this group even likes him. Yet, they don’t much like
her either so it is not impossible for him to win over 60% just difficult.
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