The US Election Polling / Data Thread

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 24 points among likely Hispanic voters in Florida, according to a new poll that shows a significant number of Republican Latinos are unsure of their nominee for the White House.

Clinton’s 54-30 percent lead over Trump with Hispanic voters stands in marked contrast to the U.S. Senate race, where bilingual Republican incumbent Marco Rubio is ahead of Democratic U.S. Rep Patrick Murphy by 48-39 percent, a TelOpinion Research survey conducted for the conservative-leaning Associated Industries of Florida business group shows.

Clinton’s huge advantage over Trump is buoyed by strong support among Democrats (whom she carries 75-13 percent) and independents (among whom she wins 61-20 percent) in the poll of 600 likely Latino voters. Trump’s 63-19 percent lead over Clinton among Republican Hispanics could be much bigger, but 14 percent are undecided. That’s double the number of undecided Latino Democrats.

Those numbers worry Republicans because the polls show Trump is already under-performing 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s final margins with Florida Hispanics — yet there’s a month of campaigning left and Clinton is outgunning Trump in paid Spanish-language TV ads that are playing in heavy rotation in the Miami area.

http://www.politico.com/states/flori...ew-poll-106082

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

On the subject of undecided voters, a story in WaPo indicates that Democrats believe there are extremely few undecided voters, meaning this will ultimately be a turnout election:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.670f77882e63

There is some other stuff in there about the VP debate, but honestly that is a bit less interesting. The real point to me is that the Democrats are betting on a turnout strategy that targets the Obama coalition, which is still there but less enthused about voting for Clinton.

[ernie]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...-white-voters/

Overall the Trump strategy has been to gain white voters to make up for the loss of minority voters which to me seems a silly way to go as one heads towards the future with more and more minority voters. But that's the current state of affairs for the GOP.

Problem is other than non-college degree male white folk, he has been losing votes compared to Romney. Overall Romney ended up with a 17 point lead on Obama for white voters. Trump has fallen to 13 points but given the changing demographics he would need about a 22 point lead to match Romney's performance.

[octothorp]

It's uncanny how the Republicans basically went the opposite of all of the big takeaways of their 2012 post-mortem.

Pass immigration reform? Nah, we'll have the most hard-line anti-immigrant platform in a half-century.
Listen to minorities? How about minorities listen to us about how awful their lives and communities are.
Accepting gays? We'll ignore this at the federal level while our states pass regressive anti-gay platforms (including our VP candidate).
Try and get past the echo chamber the right suffers from? Even Fox is MSM now, we'll go with Breitbart and other conspiracy theory websites.
Stop the perception that we're all a bunch of rich guys? How about we nominate a presidential candidate who literally cannot stop talking about how rich he is.

[ernie]

^^ yep. And in all honesty it is the GOP leaderships fault. They went the way of constant obstruction in Washington so everyone sees nothing getting done. The republican voters who were already mad at the establishment just got more angry. That anger let buffoons like Carson, Cruz and Trump control the nomination. 2012 started it with some minor wins here and there for Bachman and Perry but everyone knew they didn't stand a chance against a Romney but 2016 have pushed things further. So now you truly have the Tea Party in control of the GOP and the platform. And the platform and policies are scary (not just the stuff Trump talks about). Very regressive LGBT policies, immigration etc.

And it's why the leadership is silent and distancing themselves. They can't outright vote against their party without truly ripping it apart but the silence speaks volumes. Personally, they need to rip it apart so they can cut out the cancer. They need to be center-right but instead they've moved so far right that they have allowed the democrats to take that center-right position.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by octothorp

It's uncanny how the Republicans basically went the opposite of all of the big takeaways of their 2012 post-mortem.

I mean, let's be fair, this is absolutely not the result that the people at the top of the Republican party wanted.

[ernie]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I mean, let's be fair, this is absolutely not the result that the people at the top of the Republican party wanted.

Correct it's not. But they allowed it by (1) continuing to give fodder to the anti-establishment portion of the party and (2) by failing to rally around someone center-right that was electable (well they failed to rally around anyone)

[Itse]

Originally Posted by ernie

Correct it's not. But they allowed it by (1) continuing to give fodder to the anti-establishment portion of the party and (2) by failing to rally around someone center-right that was electable (well they failed to rally around anyone)

The way I see it, they've been doing (1) so much that that (2) was not an option.

The Republican base just hates moderates right now.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by ernie

Personally, they need to rip it apart so they can cut out the cancer.

I dunno....

Eventually the rabid base (Tea Party folk) will get tired of losing the Executive and either stay home or hold their nose and vote for the moderate. I'm a bit concerned for the democrats when that happens... they keep on getting usual Presidential party ding during the mid-terms and don't make up for it enough during the terms. As a result the Democrats bench is weak. Not enough new blood in Congress or at the State level.

They really need to put some extra effort in at the state level.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Itse

The way I see it, they've been doing (1) so much that that (2) was not an option.

The Republican base just hates moderates right now.

Not sure what moderate means in this situation.

I would say that the Republican mantra of lowering corporate taxes and restricting social safety nets just does not resonate with their base anymore.

It's the end of the party. Most Trump supporters that I have spoken with just want to destroy the party.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by ernie

Correct it's not. But they allowed it by (1) continuing to give fodder to the anti-establishment portion of the party and (2) by failing to rally around someone center-right that was electable (well they failed to rally around anyone)

I think it's important to note that the Republican establishment is more similar (as is the Democratic establishment) to an industry than a company. What I mean is that the controlling forces are not all pulling/pushing in the same direction. The establishment doesn't want the rise of the Evangelical fundamentalism for example, but must coexist.

The reason I bring this up is the narrative that the party "allowed" or "created" Trump is probably a gross oversimplification of a very complex phenomenon we're seeing all over the world. The rise of reactionary demagoguery is not easily stopped by a splintered party, as we're seeing all over the world. The truth may simply be that the Republican party has been splintered over the last 12 years to the point where no one group had enough power anymore to stop it. Mitch McConnell has been steadfast in his efforts to stop it, Ryan tried stopping it as did Reince Priebus. That's really every leader the establishment had and they couldn't because they no longer have enough power.

If you wanted to point a finger, Fox news would be a good place, though there's an argument of chicken vs egg there too

[Itse]

Originally Posted by peter12

Not sure what moderate means in this situation.

Moderate means anyone willing to compromise with "the liberals" in any way. Even on a rhetorical level. The specific policies are secondary.

It's one of the reasons why Trump can change his policies on the fly and it really doesn't matter. As long as the Democrats consider him the anti-christ, it's fine.

So if you wanted to go back in time to stop Trump from being nominated, the best way to do it would probably have been a comment from the Clintons about how Trump is "an old friend who they know they can work with".

[troutman]

538 has flipped Ohio and Iowa to Clinton.

Landslide territory.

[mrkajz44]

The shift to Clinton in the past week is quite interesting. I always thought the debates would be key, but did the first debate really make this big of a difference? Or are we seeing a bit of a bounce that will taper off?

The next debate is this weekend, but with the numbers in Clinton's court already, I'm not sure this one will have a big impact overall.

[octothorp]

Yeah, it doesn't look like there's any regression with how long this has been going on. And it's been in polling at the national level as well as in literally every swing state. We're at 10 days of steady rising in the polls for her, which is really strong for this late in the campaign. The basketball metaphor that fits here is where one team already in the lead goes on a 8-0 run over six minutes in the fourth quarter. Yeah, 8 points isn't a huge difference, but the combination of increasing a lead while killing the clock is devastating.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by troutman

538 has flipped Ohio and Iowa to Clinton.

Landslide territory.

True, but that is largely based on the model's assumptions about how the national vote will be distributed state by state.

Iowa has not been polled since the debate. The last reputable poll there was by Quinnipiac, between Sept. 13-21, and it showed Trump ahead by 7 points--this was at a time when Hillary's nationwide numbers were also in the toilet, but she still had about a 1-2 point lead.

I think it's reasonable to assume that Iowa will tilt ever so slightly republican relative to the national average, in part because of a high number of non-college educated white voters. Iowa is a very "white" state: non-Hispanic whites make up 61% of the US population, but in Iowa they are 85%. It is the sixth "whitest" state by that measure. Iowa ranks 34th in the US for population with at least a college degree, at right around 25%.

There is also a significant rural population in Iowa. Iowa has roughly 3 million people, of whom about The biggest urban centres are Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, and they make up just under 750,000 (if memory serves) The urban centres (especially the "college towns" like Ames and Iowa City) tend to be liberal, but they are kind of a drop in the bucket when most of the voters are in rural areas.

Add to that the Chuck Grassley factor--a popular incumbent republican senator running for re-election--and you have a recipe for Iowa going republican this year.

With that said, I very much hope Iowa goes for Clinton. It's my old stomping grounds, and I hate to see them vote for an orange clown who has temper tantrums worse than my 5 year old's. But I don't get a vote, so I just have to watch from the sidelines and hope. But the above may explain somewhat why Iowa has been polling slightly more republican than a lot of swing states this cycle.

[GGG]

Fivethrityeight had a few neat articles on how correlated each state was to the national vote and how that's accounted for in the model. So it basically uses similar states and adjusts for demographics to get a +/- from the national average.

I think the flipping of Ohio and Iowa is saying that even though Ohio and Iowa are 4-5 points more republican then the national average Clinton's 4-5 point lead is enough to counter act this.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by mrkajz44

The shift to Clinton in the past week is quite interesting. I always thought the debates would be key, but did the first debate really make this big of a difference? Or are we seeing a bit of a bounce that will taper off?

I think it's a combination of three things...

1: Clinton had that really bad week so some of the gain is simply the bad news cycles ending and her regressing back to her baseline support level.

2: She strongly won the debate

3: Trump did his thing where he has a meltdown in the face of adversity

... I do think there will be some tapering off but not fully (independent of other events naturally).

[Senator Clay Davis]

Polling is pretty much the inverse of the last few weeks, everything appears to be going wrong for Trump. Arizona, Nevada, even a poll today from Indiana only has him up 5. He basically needs a Wikileaks Hail Mary or a massive Hillary gaffe to turn the tide at this point. Just about 30 days out so running out of time for that game changer.

[photon]

What he really needs is a new campaign manager (in case he's reading this).