Polling Update #21: Race has tightened, time to look at Clinton’s path of least resistance to 270.

           There can be little doubt that the Presidential race is closer than it was last week. It is possible it will get closer still. Clinton leads by 3.1% points 48.0% to 44.9 % in the two-way RCP average, down from 5.5% last week: 47.8% to 42.3%.  In the 4 way the margin is now at 3.2 %:  45.6% to 42.4%, which is down from 5 points last week 44.9% to 39.9%.  Besides the obvious tightening, the clear thing about these polls is that Clinton hasn’t lost any support, but Trump has gained.   Since Clinton was very close to being on a winning number already, this may just be natural partisan returning to the fold.  Frankly this current set of polling is heavy on daily tracking polls and short on the national surveys from big firms, which we are more inclined to trust.  Still the race is close enough that the Electoral College scenarios, which usually don’t come into play, may now clearly come to the fore.  On this front the path forward for Clinton is clear.  

Obama won states that earned him 272 electoral votes with the smallest margin in any of those states being 5.37%. Clinton is currently showing a lead in almost all of those states save Iowa, which is giving a slight polling edge to Trump. Clinton makes up for that by gaining Virginia, which was already the state Obama won by biggest margin of states he did not need. Since Virginia’s 13 electoral votes are more than Iowa’s 6 this puts Clinton on 279 electoral votes.   This gives her the leeway to lose either Nevada (which is looking increasingly unlikely because of the early vote) or New Hampshire.

 Clinton is a bit imperiled in Maine’s 2^nd Congressional district which is worth 1 electoral vote and comes into play in a mostly tiny set of possibilities. Trump is still eyeing Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Pennsylvania as possible places to gain but none seems particularly likely.  Clinton also has strong chances in North Carolina and Florida, with Ohio and Iowa still very close and even Arizona presenting as a true tossup.   These additional five states, while interesting, are not where the real battle to 270 is.   The path of least resistance for Clinton with Obama need states plus Virginia and minus Iowa still seems to have her on track to win.  Yet loss of a single state(save Nevada or New Hampshire) can upset this applecart and thus her victory is far from secure.

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Early Voting off to a good start for Democrats.

Early voting has begun in earnest in the three major battleground states where it will be crucial: Nevada, North Carolina and Florida.    Nevada’s early vote accounted for 70% of the vote in 2012. In North Carolina it was 61%. In Florida it was 56%.  Here is a quick look at where we are now. 

(These numbers all come from electproject.org)

Nevada 

Through Monday’s total, roughly 17% of the votes cast in Nevada in 2012 had already been cast in this election. Democrats hold approximately a 13% advantage among those who have returned ballots as opposed to a 6% statewide registration. This is just a touch better than in 2012. Since 2012 ended in a 6.6% win for Obama, it suggests everything is on track for Democrats to repeat their 2012 victory. It is still a little early to reach a final conclusion, but then again by the end of the day it is likely 20% of all the votes cast in Nevada will have been cast.  Nevada is looking pretty cooked for Clinton. 

North Carolina

Democrats have a big lead (nearly 20%) in the early vote in North Carolina.  Roughly 15% of the 2012 vote has been cast. However Democrats always dominate early voting in North Carolina, and so far they are doing so at a slightly slower pace than in 2012. Diminished Democratic performance is somewhat mitigated by the fact that in many counties the number and quality of the polling place locations has decreased as compared to 2012.  It is those counties and only those counties that are causing the decline.  These Counties will soon open many more locations, and once that gets going the comparative ground might be made up. It is also important to note that doing as well as in 2012 early vote might not be necessary for Secretary Clinton.  Even though Democrats lost in 2012, Republicans benefited from a big win on Election Day, one which might be harder to pull off when Republicans do not like their nominee nearly as much.  In a week or so we will have a clearer picture. 

Florida  

At the moment Florida has something close to an absolute flat- footed tie.  Republicans have cast about 7,000 more ballots than Democrats, but that only includes 1 day of in person Early Voting, which Democrats won by 24,000. In Florida we have also seen about 20% of the 2012 vote already cast.  These numbers are slightly higher than in 2012, when Republicans built something of an advantage in mail ballots. Democrats had to needle away over the course of early vote. This year Democrats almost entirely erased their deficit after the first day of early vote.  Dems will likely have the lead when today’s results are reported tomorrow. This is better than in 2012 and is considered by those in the know to be very good for Democrats, but a few more days will certainly help clarify. 

Conclusion: 

Nevada looks very good for Democrats, while North Carolina and Florida both look good but will require more results to warrant confirmation. 

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The Nutmeg Preview

We launched this blog to build upon previous columns and ideas developed for Connecticut news sites. To honor that tradition, we’re going to do a deep dive into Connecticut’s elections as we have done for battleground states. 

In case there is any confusion, Connecticut is not a battleground state. In actual battleground states, we have presented models that indicate what a victory for each candidate would look like. Trying to do that in Connecticut would be a lie. As we demonstrated in 2012, for a Democrat to lose statewide in Connecticut in a presidential year is very difficult. That’s even more true with Donald Trump as the alternative; he can’t be expected to win or even be competitive in the 4th congressional district, and a Republican who can not win the 4th can not win the state. 

Democrats have won by over 10% in the last four presidential elections and there is no reason to believe that the trend will end. The interesting thing to watch is whether Clinton is able to break margins set by President Obama in 2008, or whether she will be slightly below that. It is important to remember that Connecticut is not special. The state’s movements from election to election tend to follow the national trends.

When Gore and Bush tied, Gore won Connecticut by 17.5% (Aided by a Nutmegger on the national ticket). Kerry slipped a bit to a 10.4% win in Connecticut over Bush as Bush improved nationally, winning by 2.46%. When Obama won nationally by 7.27%, Obama won Connecticut by 22.3%. When Obama won nationally in 2012 by 3.86%, he won Connecticut by 17.3%. 

Although imperfectly, Connecticut has tended to follow the national trend. Therefore, if Clinton leads Trump by about 6 (what the RCP average has for today), she would be reasonably expected to win Connecticut by about 20%. If she wins by more nationally, Connecticut would be likely to expand. 

The Democratic presidential primary provides a sneak peek as to how Clinton might fare within the state. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/5/1545065/-Maps-and-Analysis-of-the-2016-Connecticut-Democratic-Presidential-Primary In places where Clinton lost to Sanders, she will either fall behind or improve less on Obama’s 2012 performance. In places where Clinton beat Sanders, she will exceed Obama’s 2012 margin and might even do better than Obama did 2008, perhaps winning Darien,and New Canaan.

Connecticut’s core cities, Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, may be an exception because there isn’t much room to improve. In addition, the absolute utter sleepiness of the Senate race this year, compared to 2012’s monster mash race with the WWE”s Linda McMahon, is likely to be less urgent in the cities and thus could generate less turnout.(not to mention the lack of Obama on the ballot)  Because we can’t yet know how Trump will perform nationally, we can’t know if there are any towns to watch for him to win that Obama won four years ago. If there are any, they are likely to be in the 2nd Congressional District or the Naugatuck Valley.

This brings us to the section specially for the Connecticut State Capitol crowd. We take issue with the idea that there is no connection between the top of the ticket races and those further down the ballot. Republicans like to point to the fact that they didn’t lose seats in 2012 despite Obama’s win. That was basically true, but hid a bigger truth. After the 2012 elections, Republicans held just three House seats in districts where Obama got over 55% of the vote. By contrast, Democrats only held one seat in a district Obama did not win. One of those three Republican seats was the only seat Democrats picked up in 2014. 

Top of the ticket matters a great deal down ballot, but it depends a lot on the margin. The battle is for 36 seats in places where Obama won by 50% to 55%. Democrats currently hold 13 of these seats. Republicans hold 23 of these seats. Republicans also hold eight seats in places Obama got more than 55% as a result of their excellent performance in the mid-term elections; six were gained in 2014, and the two others are open this year. 

It is not as simple as the party that wins at the top of the ticket necessarily wins at the bottom, but it is true that there is a strong push in that direction. This is particularly true in Connecticut because so many of the Republican House incumbents who are being challenged are one-termers and it is harder to build up the incumbent advantage in that time. If those who voted for the Democratic candidate in 2014 vote for the Democratic candidate in 2016, then the presidential year voter surge alone is likely enough to take down many of these Republicans. 

On the Senate side, the gerrymander is striking enough that it is hard to have much in the way of turnover. Democrats currently hold the seats they should save one and Republicans mostly hold the seats they should. Democrats do not hold a single Romney-won seat (there are only six). In places where Obama got 55% or better, Democrats hold the Senate seat, except one won by a Republican in 2014.The Democrats hold just two seats in places Obama won by less than 55%. Republicans are making a play for an open seat in Groton/Stonington that Obama won with 56%. There is some Republican effort to play in districts Obama won with 60% or better   in 12 but those seats do not seem overly promising for Republicans. It is not clear what seats Democrats are targeting for pickups.

In conclusion, a status quo state Senate seems like the most likely outcome. (The range is R +1 to D+2). In the House, Democrats seem likely to gain, (although the range is R+2 seats to D+10).

We have not talked at all about the Congressional races because there might as well not be Congressional races. Realizing defeat was near certain, Republicans did not raise the money needed to mount competitive races and thus made defeat 

completely certain.

We predict Clinton by 20% in Connecticut and, if we’re wrong and had to say whether it was more or less, we’d say more.  We will be around to heckle if we are wrong. 

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Polling Update # 20 All Quiet, except for the outliers.

This week saw a slight dip for Clinton in the RCP average, but with time running out her odds of winning increased nonetheless.  At an earlier stage in the race, the time remaining mattered less, just as being up 7 points in a football game with a half to play is not that much different from being up 7 with three quarters to go.  However now that we have reached the last two weeks Hillary gains more from eating up one of the three remaining weeks than she loses from a slight narrowing of the margin. So let’s look at the numbers. Clinton now leads in the two-way race: 47.8 % to 42.3%, down from last week when she led 48.8% to 41.8%. In the four-way, the race is now 44.9% to 39.9%, down from 46% to 38.9% last week.  The primary driver behind this decline is the new Investor’s Business Daily tracking poll, which shows a tie in both contests and is new this week.  One poll showing a tie can move the average by about a point. For example, if you had 5 polls, each with a 5-point lead, the poll average margin would be 5%.  If you then added one that was tied, the average would drop to 4.2%. There is no reason to discount the IBD poll, but there is no reason to think it is special either.  Before this is over, we might go back and check to see if lopping off the best and worst poll for each side would yield a better result or if pure averaging is better. Either way the advent of this outlying poll is responsible for most of the average change, and that’s why we called the week quiet with the exception of outliers. The one other thing to watch is that there are still somewhere between 7% and 10% undecided, depending on whether we use the 2 or 4 way.  10% left is basically nowhere near enough to overcome a 6% deficit (Trump would need 80% of them).  But if the undecided simply don’t show or tip one way or another that could go a long way toward determining the size of the spread. For now the point is clear: Clinton leads and there is very little time left on the clock. 

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Is Evan McMullin Really Playing to Win?

For those who might not know, Evan McMullin is a conservative “Never Trump” Republican presidential candidate who has gotten on the ballot in 11 states. He is making waves in one of them (Utah) with the possibility for waves in another (Idaho). As a principled stand, McMullin’s candidacy makes some sense.  There are lots of reasons Republicans can’t stand Clinton as well as lots of reason they can’t stomach Trump.

But that is not the only argument his camp is making and this is where he comes undone. McMullin’s camp is now spurred on by a 538 story http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-evan-mcmullin-could-win-utah-and-the-presidency/ that describes a plan to victory that keeps Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both under 270 electoral college votes and thus throws the race to the House.  https://twitter.com/Evan_McMullin/status/787473094529003520 McMullin’s chief adviser touted that possibility today. https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/789555652767076353

At the same time, however, McMullin is pursuing another strategy that would make it impossible for him to deny both Trump and Clinton the electoral votes needed to win. McMullin is calling for voters to vote for him in all 50 states. Because McMullin is more conservative leaning, his voters, particularly those who write in his names in states where he’s not on the ballot, could cost Trump some states. The conservative leader Eric Erikson, formerly of Red State, says he is writing in McMullin in Georgia. That is a state McMullin definitely needs Trump to win to keep Clinton under 270 and preserve his own chance of winning the presidency in the House. Yet, here is McMullin bragging about a vote he got in Georgia. https://twitter.com/Evan_McMullin/status/789203260628271104

It might be fun to pretend you could win if you got lucky. But the rest of McMullin’s messaging suggests he wants votes everywhere and the better he does in states he can’t win, the less chance he has to win. Without the explicit command not to hurt Trump, the McMullin campaign is just helping Clinton.  

Clarity from the campaign on whether it is playing to win, or playing to get as many votes as possible, would be helpful. For now it seems as if McMullin would like to chase the fever dream without acknowledging that his actions undermine his admittedly tiny chances to win.

This all might seem like pointless speculation and, to some extent, it is. But it is important to remember that during the Republican primaries the inability to run internal simulations of what would happen with so many candidates and no cooperation helped make Trump the winner. The Republican establishment didn’t focus on or understand the rules. Being mushy on these tactical questions is what got Republicans into this fix to begin with.  

Being clear about how systems work is as important as being clear about what you are trying to accomplish.  Lacking this clarity matters. McMullin does not appear to be playing to win and thus should not lean on it in his messaging.  

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Reading Tea Leaves in the Early Vote in Battle Ground States

We like to think that election day is election day, but it’s not. Many states will begin their early voting process within the next three days; the first day of early voting in North Carolina was today. In 2012 about 36% of the all votes were cast early or absentee. In many states with such options, far more than half of the vote was cast that way. Before we go further, it is important to note that most of the base data that shapes our understanding comes from Professor Michael McDonald and his fantastic work at electionproject.org.

Early voting means a campaign can come very close to wrapping up the election by building a lead that is very difficult to overcome on election day. In-person early voting in particular is a vote of choice for African Americans and thus it helps Democratic candidates. Democrats depend heavily on success in the early vote in three states, North Carolina, Florida and Nevada. In 2012, 56% of Florida’s vote was early, 70% of Nevada’s vote was early and 61% of North Carolina’s vote was early. The trend in these states is toward even more early voting.

Because partisan identification and demographics will play a large role in this election, having a clear idea of who has voted and how they have voted can say a lot about how the election will go. If a candidate builds a lead with a high percentage of the vote in, it becomes difficult to overcome.

Nevada has no data in yet. In both Florida and North Carolina, Democrats are running ahead of their 2012 pace while Republicans are running slightly behind. It is also significant that so far those states’ results are from absentee mail ballots, a method that traditionally favors Republicans but one which Democrats have cut into pretty well so far. Florida in-person voting will start Monday. Results from North Carolina’s first day of in-person early voting should tell us a lot about how effective the Democratic efforts will be.  

In addition to a polling update on Monday, we will be giving early vote updates on Tuesdays and perhaps on Fridays as well. We can learn a lot from early vote and will try to bring it to you first. 

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Why Texas Is the State to Watch in an Epic Blowout

We got unexpected news yesterday that the Clinton campaign was going up on the air in Texas. This comes as three polls show Clinton within striking distance in the state.

The odds still overwhelmingly favor Trump in Texas and the amount of money the Clinton campaign is putting in does not suggest that the campaign is taking the state all that seriously. But the math for a Clinton win is not quite as forbidding as people might think.  

What’s striking is how little the nonwhite vote needs to move to make the contest competitive. To analyze the demographic trends, we unfortunately don’t have a Texas exit poll from 2012. We are left only with the data from 2008. That year, McCain got a solid, if not spectacular, 25% of the nonwhite vote which made up 37% of the electorate. Trump seems unlikely to duplicate that performance, and that is where his trouble starts. 

This year, the nonwhite portion of the electorate is likely to be around 40%. Combine that with white Democrats, who make up about 10% of the electorate, and that means that 50% of the voters come from Democratic base groups. More Democratic voting Hispanics mean Clinton is likely to get 80% of that half of the electorate, compared to Obama’s 75% in 2008. This gives her 40% of the vote right out of the gate.   

Trump will bounce back, however, as the remaining white voters voted nearly 85% for McCain and he won by about 11%. Obama’s 75% with his 50% is not as good as McCain’s 85% with his 50%. Clinton is likely to do a bit better by taking 10% of the type of whites who voted for McCain, putting her at 45% of the vote (which is not that far from her average of the three recent polls). Clinton could win with that percentage if 10% votes for third party candidates. That is a lot of votes for a third party but it is not an impossibly high number. 

Trump has two somewhat connected problems in Texas. The first is that most Texans did not necessarily buy what he was selling in the primary. Trump got only 26.7% of the vote in the Texas primary, one of his worst showings in the country. This poor performance was likely due to the presence of native son Ted Cruz. Yet their ugly battle likely had spill-over effect. Although Cruz technically may have waived the white flag of surrender, there is little doubt the bad blood is still very bad.   

The other problem for Trump in Texas is that due to massive gerrymandering almost all Texas Republicans are likely to win no matter what the turnout in their districts is. In addition, there’s no U.S. Senate race. So Texas Republicans have little incentive to work hard. Staying home has no real downside for the voter and no real downside for the party, except a Trump loss and they don’t particularly like Trump. If anything, a Trump loss in Texas could be psychically satisfying for the Texas establishment and, ironically, could bring additional resources to the state party should it now be in play. It doesn’t help Trump that Jeb Bush’s son is in charge of making sure Trump wins in Texas and George P. may not be particularly eager for that to happen. 

Even if the Trump campaign senses the danger, it does not have the resources or the ability to get into the state and do much. They are already out-organized and put-funded. 

Republicans traditionally count on about one in four nonwhite voters or better and they are simply not going to get that this year. They still will probably be able to carry the state, but if the race lands at about 9% nationally, Texas could fall.

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Polling Update # 19: Clinton Calm Continues

As the negative news continues to swirl around Donald Trump, this week’s polling is very similar to last week’s.  

In the two-way polling, Trump trails by 7.0%, 48.8% to 41.8%, compared to last week’s 48.3% to 42.5%. The four-way polling has Trump losing even more ground, trailing by 7.1 points. Clinton has 46% to Trump’s 38.9 %, a two point gain for Clinton, compared to last week’s 44.8% to 39.7%. These are very solid leads, confirmed by almost all of the polling available. 

The interesting questions building off of our last post are these: Is this Trump’s ceiling and what will happen with undecided voters? Is partisanship going to lead them back to Trump? Are they going to vote at all or are they going to vote for a third party? Third party or undecided voters currently account for between 9% and 15% of voters. We are clearly past the point where there are enough of these voters to turn the tide, as Clinton seems likely to win on the amount of support she has now. 

If Trump only gets 41.8% of the votes, his current number, that is going to be hard on Republicans down ballot. His percentage might grow slightly as undecideds decide not to participate, leaving his decided voters as a slightly bigger pool of all voters. This would also increase his deficit as the larger number of Clinton voters would gain by more.

Trump’s percentage of the vote is now getting closer to the percentage of voters who view him favorably. He has a 34.5% favorable rating, according to the RCP average, so he is still getting some voters who don’t like him but not many. This all means that the undecided pool does not include many people who like him. 

Clinton’s favorable score is also moving up with her overall polling. She is viewed favorably by 43.2% of those polled, and is actually doing a touch worse than Trump at adding unfavorable voters to her total. 

Roughly 20% of the voters have an unfavorable opinion of both candidates. But Clinton has about an 8% higher favorable rating than Trump. That means Trump would need to get 70% of voters who dislike both candidates to vote for him to overcome his deficit. Since these voters have the option of either not voting or voting for third parties that becomes very difficult to pull off. Trump needs to drive down Hillary’s favorables at a time he is having a hard time making any real news beyond the chaos. 

With three weeks to go, what happens with the undecided/third party vote will determine how many states Clinton will win and help decide the down ballot races. This is what we are watching. 

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The Republican Nightmare Scenario

The current polling now points to two possibilities in the presidential race: Trump loses in the five-point range or Trump loses in an absolute avalanche. There is not much polling to suggest it could be any better than that for Trump at this point. Although things can and do change quickly, the new sexual assault revelations seem to have set the arrow in a clear direction.  Because of this, we thought it was important to give an idea of what could happen if the bottom falls out of the Republican vote.

 Presidential elections tend to have much larger turnouts than those held during midterms. In 2012, around 129 million people voted. In 2014, only around 83 million voted. This gap is largely responsible for Republican control of Congress. The danger for Republicans in this election is that Democrats approach Presidential year turnout but Republicans, despondent over Trump’s chance to win or too disgusted to even bring themselves to vote, decide not to show up at the polls. It dramatically changes the calculus.

To give just a rough idea. There are 84 House districts in which the vote total for the Democratic candidate in 2012 would beat the winning total for the Republican in 2014. Now clearly some of these districts are just way too red to actually be in play. But the point stands that if you get asymmetric turnout you can have wacky results. Congressional Republicans’ allure alone is usually not enough to generate turnout high enough to save them. 

Trump may yet be able to stabilize somewhat. He might even come back. But for Republicans there is a very real danger that admission of defeat at the Presidential level will mean defeat down ballot as Trump supporters despair and don’t vote. 

Standing by Trump, however, carries its own dangers. Some voters are really furious about his candidacy and thus may not appreciate a kind word directed toward him by their representative. These cross-cutting pressures, combined with the risk of asymmetric turnout, is what could pull the Republicans under. There is very little Republicans can do about this problem either, which to some degree they know. The Access Hollywood tape brought a string of un-endorsements last weekend but since then silence and even a few re-endorsements. Alienating Trump people turned out to be a bad idea.   

The danger of both supporting Trump and not supporting Trump could lead to asymmetric turnout and Republican ruination. In such a case, upwards of 80 House seats and 10 or so Senate seats could actually fall. This is still very unlikely but it is no longer impossible. 

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Polling Update # 18: The state of the meltdown.

We have all been looking at huge news that has upended the discussion and moved the polls.

 Hillary Clinton now leads by 5.8% in the two-way race 48.3% to 42.5%. Clinton is up two points from last week, when she had 48.1% to Trump’s 44.3%. In the four-way, Clinton leads by 5.1%, 44.8% to 39.7%. This is up 1.4% from last week when she had 44.3% to 40.6%.

We don’t yet have an idea of just how big this lead is going to be. There are some rumblings that it is going to be bigger but we don’t yet know. Big news can swing things in a big way. We will see more as we go forward but for now Clinton is on the march. 

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Polling Update # 17: Clinton Debate win leads to a safer lead

                Sorry about missing last week. The data kept changing before we could get a report up, and then it was already debate time.  However, in the two weeks since we wrote, things have gotten better for Clinton.   While she led in the two-way RCP average by just .9% two weeks ago (44.9 to 44.0), today she leads by 3.8% (48.1% to 44.3%). In the four-way race, two weeks ago it was  .7 with Clinton at 41.0% and Trump at 40.3%. Now it is 3.7% with Clinton at 44.3% to Trump at 40.6%. Besides the obvious improvement for Clinton, one interesting take away is that both candidates have gained support. Trump .3%  in each average and Clinton 2.9% in the head to head and 3% with the minor party candidates included. Undecided voters are deciding, and so far they are mostly picking Clinton.  Clinton is also nudging ever closer to having the amount of support that she needs to win without adding from the group who might be undecided. We are still a long way to go, but for the moment Clinton leads by about what Obama won by in 2012. 

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