Aaron Strife
Banned
So states where Clinton is currently leading in polling then.
Did you know that polling also shows Clinton ahead in North Carolina, a Romney state? What rabbit does Trump pull out of his hat to make up for that one?
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Democratic Senators feeling trepidation towards HRC's declining poll numbers.
- Thread starter Team Alucard
- Start date
- Status
Did you know that polling also shows Clinton ahead in North Carolina, a Romney state? What rabbit does Trump pull out of his hat to make up for that one?
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
Trump routinely underperformed his polls in the primary, I wonder if that will happen again.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Given that he has no campaign infrastructure, it might end up costing him a point or two in turnout alone.
That could be his death sentence in a close election. Polling is tight.
JinjoUnchained
Member
Considering that a vast majority of political threads and posts on this site have a liberal agenda, I think it's nice to have some balance. We don't want this site to be one big amen corner, it's bad for discussion.
For the record, I'm an Independent and voting for Gary Johnson.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Cherrypicking polls does not present balance.
Balance does not mean putting both candidates on equal footing if they're not.
Gnome Scat
Member
They haven't even debated yet.
metalslimer
Member
There is no reason to cherry pick polls. It's fine to discuss the polls and especially as each one adds to the aggregate but to literally only highlight negative polls is not worth it to counteract any liberal bias this board may have.
umm...I don't really get it. When I look at my phone, the polls-only forecast says 78%. When I open it up on my laptop, it says 65.9%.
sunshine and gasoline
Banned
Better for them to be worried than to just assume that they will have an easy victory.
Square2015
Member
Whoa, Alucard backwards spells Dracula! ...does Konami know this?
Aaron Strife
Banned
It's important to note that even in polls where Trump is leading, he isn't gaining any support.
Some soft Clinton supporters have concerns about the email scandal and are moving to undecided. Maybe some of them won't vote, or they'll vote third party. But they sure as hell won't vote for Trump, and the vast majority of them will come back once this has blown over.
Clinton is likely to get a bounce from the DNC with Obama, Warren, Sanders, Biden and her husband all stumping for her, as well as her VP if it's not Warren. Unless she bombs one or the debates, I could very well see her staking out a big lead and not looking back. Trump gets no RNC bounce just like Romney.
Cesare Borgia
Banned
I forgot this is "pretend a republican can win PA" season.
Hard to imagine Trump winning Florida either given the Hispanic voter registration/GOTV machine on the ground there, with no competition from republicans. Ohio could go red, but I doubt it.
AuthenticM
Member
TestOfTide
Banned
I'd even go far as to say that based on demographics, Trump is more likely to win PA than he is to win Florida.
As Aaron said, the polls aren't showing Trump's numbers going up, they are just showing Hillary's numbers going down, which immediately tells us that all we are seeing is Hillary voters second guessing themselves in light of the email controversy, but these people second guessing themselves are still sure of one thing: They won't vote Trump.
Alucard, let me know if/when we see Trump's numbers consistently break his 43% ceiling in addition to Clinton's numbers going down, because until that happens Trump has no reasonable chance to win.
Steeped in a Sea of Games
Member
I have to agree that people saying that Democrats have nothing to fear in the face of Trump are only serving to shoot themselves in the foot. It's nothing but an ego-stroking mechanism; like you're at the top of some sort of hill of superiority, but you're actively hurting chances of winning while also coming across like a total tool.
Complacency is the devil and gaffers should stop trying to feed the beast so willingly. No matter the numbers, we should all act like Trump winning is a definite and real possibility up until the bitter end.
Complacency is the devil and gaffers should stop trying to feed the beast so willingly. No matter the numbers, we should all act like Trump winning is a definite and real possibility up until the bitter end.
Father_Brain
Banned
Hillary will still probably win, but... well, she's far from the best candidate Democrats could have picked.
AnotherDayAnotherDollar
Banned
All anecdotes, but I've spent a significant amount of time in VA and FL due to work this past year and I definitely feel those two states are a toss up. A co worker who lives and has spent this past year in PA feels like it's a toss up there as well.
All anecdotes but I live in Madison WI and I feel Bernie Sanders has a good chance of winning the election.
A Link to the Past
Banned
On what basis is Florida a toss-up in your observations?
titiklabingapat
Member
Thank you for this PSA. The closer the race looks, the better for Democrats.
The Democrats' worse enemy is themselves and complacency.
The Democrats' worse enemy is themselves and complacency.
metalslimer
Member
In terms of candidacy I agree, in terms of the in outs of being the commander in chief I can't think of anyone better at least in terms of how Clinton is at relationship building when she is actually on the job.
AnotherDayAnotherDollar
Banned
He did beat Clinton there in the primaries, so your feelings were kinda correct.
I talk to a lot of people from Dade to Alachua county. Besides the "Trump 2016" signs I see, there are a lot of folks, including minorities, who I talk to who are adamant about not voting for Clinton. People want to vote 3rd party instead (Haven't met many saying they will vote for Trump instead). I have talked to a fair amount of folks who want to vote yes on medical marijuana and write in Bernie Sanders or Mickey Mouse's name for president.
eyeball_kid
Member
Hillary supporters (aka the Democratic establishment) remind me of Rubio supporters (aka the Republican establishment) both were/are underestimating Trump's abilities and popular appeal, and both were/are overestimating the appeal of their own candidate.
Hillary can adopt all the progressive and popularist policies she wants, but sometimes in elections it's not policies that the general population respond to. I think Hillary knows she lacks the charisma (and likability) of Obama or Trump, but all she can do is keep swinging.
Having said that, it's still early days. I think once the Clinton-Trump debates start, we'll get a better sense of which direction the mood of the populace is moving.
Hillary can adopt all the progressive and popularist policies she wants, but sometimes in elections it's not policies that the general population respond to. I think Hillary knows she lacks the charisma (and likability) of Obama or Trump, but all she can do is keep swinging.
Having said that, it's still early days. I think once the Clinton-Trump debates start, we'll get a better sense of which direction the mood of the populace is moving.
A Link to the Past
Banned
It should be noted that conservative support found in rural communities is usually not relevant; I don't have the images on-hand, but if you look at Illinois' voting map for 2012 (I think it was 2012), it's entirely red except for one spot - Chicago. And that was enough to win Illinois for Democrats.
John Dunbar
correct about everything
bit off-topic, but when people say "polls x far from election don't matter," are there any studies that show just when they do start mattering? for example, just how off have polls been historically this far from a presidential election?
Like other people in this thread have said the primaries are not equal to the general elections.You need more than the base to win the election.Trump is still not that appealing to the majority of women and minorities.Trump also still has little to no ground game in the major battleground states and he's polling in the thirities in some of these states right now which is not good. He's also still not polling at the level where we can say he actually has a shot at winning the general. Clinton is not either even though she is closer than him to the level she needs to be polling at by now, but neither was obama at this point in 2012. I think we will now the direction this election will go in by October at least.
Florida has such a diverse population that any anecdotal evidence is useful. Got to just look at poll data.
googleplex
Member
Ok... I laughed
Team Alucard
Banned
Fivethirtyeight's model currently has Clinton projected to win FL by just 1%, despite her projected popular vote margin being +4%.
The idea that Florida is not a swing state is completely laughable. It is arguably a lean red state in an equal race (tied popular vote).
AnotherDayAnotherDollar
Banned
I'm almost never in a rural area. Most of the anecdotal I shared above were from folks in Miami and Orlando.
Like I said though, it's anecdotal, but I definitely think FL is a toss up.
We've got the dem convention, debates, and months of some of the best that the democrats have to offer campaigning for Hillary. I think she has this, but I'd urge people not to get complacent. The narrative for democrat voters is that even if it looks like Hillary is going to win they need to vote. We need to show the nation and the world that an ignorant bigoted buffoon does not speak for us.
There's this article from May:
Princeton Election Consortium: February national polls are the best you get until August
Elections scholar Christopher Wlezien very kindly sent me the data that he and Robert Erikson used to construct the graphs in The Timeline Of Presidential Elections: 1952-2008. Adding in 2012 data, I took time series from 16 Presidential campaigns and calculated the standard deviation of the total movement as a function of time. This is a measure of uncertainty about November based on polls for a given day. This graph shows the ±1 standard deviation interval in red:
This year, January 1st was 312 days before the election. At earlier dates, the standard deviation is between 14 and 22 percentage points. You can see the variation across 16 Presidential campaigns in the gray traces. So polls before the new year really are quite uninformative.
Now look at later dates: the gray curves converge. Consequently, the standard deviation declines, and reaches a local minimum at 270 days before the election, in mid-February- close to the start of primary season. So before the primaries start, February is a time when national polls tell us a fair amount about the final outcome.
But wait! After that, the standard deviation creeps upward. The election is 169 days from now, and in about a week the standard deviation hits its maximum value for 2016. Truly, now is the single worst time to be paying attention to fresh polling data. I don’t know why this is. It could be because typically, one or both parties are still going through an active nomination contest – as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are doing now.
Amusingly, national polls won’t reach their February levels of accuracy until August.
RPGCrazied
Member
There is no way Trump is going to win, none. The media/internet is going to keep this as a close race as possible to keep the clicks/ratings from dropping.
I don't think I understand. First, I agree-- that people are OK voting for Trump (an obvious and explicit racist, misogynist idiot) turns my stomach a little. And smugness is often obnoxious (though realistically Team Alucard warrants it most of the time). I don't think, though, that smug people are the same people who discounted Trump in the primary. People who didn't trust the data are the people who discounted Trump in the primary. I think there is/was some initial disbelief in the political class (and with people who, you know, pay attention at all) that the Republican institution was "that" weak and that the base was "that" insane, but it quickly became clear that it was actually that weak and insane. Much like in the Democratic primary, demographics tell a lot of the story.
This I don't really agree with. If there are Trump supporters on the margins...people who can be convinced by reasons or logic...I hope they present themselves soon. Trump has sort of made his name this electoral season by spewing hateful, racist crap. If you're OK with that to the extent you can vote for that individual to be the leader of your country, I'm not sure talking specifics about healthcare or tax policy is really going to do it to change your mind.
I actually think these people need to be shamed. What they are doing and saying is repugnant. Make no mistake-- Trump has emboldened the base to be even uglier, more racist, and more hateful than ever before. Look what they did with the GOP platform last week. The Democratic platform is more progressive, more inclusive, and more respectful of everyone in this country than ever before. The Republican platform is the opposite. Donald Trump being viewed as legitimate and being spoken of as though he were a normal candidate is making our country worse in very real ways.
I know you've been saying this for a while, especially back during the Democratic primary, about how you convince people with kindness more than nastiness. Typically, yeah, I agree. And I think we should always be respectful of other people. I'm at the point now though where it's time to stop giving people who support him the benefit of the doubt. He has made it clear and present what he stands for. I'm not ok with it.
I would hope that if anyone were on the fence, it would not be their feelings being hurt that pushed them into voting for a bigoted, hateful old loser who knows less about the world than most middle school students. Doing the right thing is too important here.
I don't normally waste time in obvious bait threads but I think it's important the country realizes what a serious disaster Trump has already been to our country. The decline in the level of discourse and the kind of ideas we tolerate as worth debating have changed forever. I'm sad about that.
Realistically, in our modern, uncompetitive democracy, 3 points is not really that close. But I agree...I wish he were losing by 20.
- Status