Monday, August 1, 2016

Election Update: 8/1/16

I'm going to spend too much time on this because things haven't really changed all that much outside of the aggregate numbers. It appears Clinton is recovering her lead a bit, but there are not many state polls that really show changes in the electoral college. I'm guessing they're suspending polling until these convention bumps straighten themselves out. Anyway, without further ado, let's get to it.

Aggregate polling

Clinton - 44.9%, Trump - 42.7% (Clinton 2.2%)

Clinton is recovering from her previous nasty weekend. The convention seems to be giving her a bump, or more accurately, Trump seems to be losing support, possibly from losing some of his bump.

Aggregate polling with third party candidates

Clinton- 40.2%, Trump- 40.2%, Johnson- 7.0%, Stein- 2.8% (Trump/Clinton Tie)

It appears the four way match up, which isn't polled as often as the two way, has not caught up to the four way. Remember, just a few days ago I looked at this same data and only found a difference of a few tenths of a percent here. Cross referencing poll list it appears there are fewer newer polls for the four way than the two way. This could explain some of the difference. Keep in mind it's not like the third parties are gaining. Johnson and Stein seem to be losing support here.

Electoral College

Changes: RealClearPolitics added Missouri as a swing state, although it seems pretty far ahead in Trump's favor and is fairly inconsequential. Consider it a formality like Wisconsin or Michigan. I also am going to add Mississippi and Texas because they seem to have current polling averages around level of swing states, although polling is fairly inconsistent here and should not be taken seriously. This shouldn't make a difference in the closer match ups, but when we get into the +3 and higher scenarios it might. I'm just including them for the sake of consistency. I don't actually expect them to flip.

Arizona - 0.5% Clinton (no change)

Florida - 0.3% Trump (no change)

Georgia - 4.5% Trump (no change)

Iowa - 0.5% Clinton (no change)

Kentucky - 3.0% Clinton (no change)

Michigan - 5.2% Clinton (no change)

Mississippi - 3.0% Trump

Missouri - 6.3% Trump

Nevada - 0.5% Trump (down from 2.0%)

New Hampshire - 3.7% Clinton (no change)

North Carolina - 2.0% Clinton (no change)

Ohio - 0.8% Clinton (no change)

Oregon - 4.5% Clinton (no change)

Pennsylvania - 4.4% Clinton (up from 3.2%)

Texas - 5.0% Trump

Virginia - 5.3% Clinton (no change)

Wisconsin - 5.6% Clinton (no change)

Maine CD2 - 1% Trump (no change)

Election Scenarios

As you can see, there were not many changes on the electoral college level. As such, you will see few changes in the modeling outside of the new states/scenarios I included.

Most likely scenario with toss ups - 295-172 Clinton

Most likely scenario (best guess) - 330-208 Clinton

All toss ups Clinton (Clinton + 1) - 366-172 Clinton

Clinton + 2 -  366-172 Clinton

Clinton + 3 - 372-166 Clinton

Clinton + 4 - 372-166 Clinton

Clinton + 5 - 426-112 Clinton

All toss ups Trump (Trump + 1) - 295-243 Clinton

Trump + 2 - 280-258 Clinton

Trump + 3 - 272-266 Clinton

Trump + 4 - 268-270 Trump

Trump + 5 -  241-297 Trump

Trump + 6 - 202-336 Trump

As we can see, with the exception of Nevada being slightly weaker toward Trump, the results in the close matchups remain unchanged. Clinton still has this thing in the bag looking at polling data realistically, and has a lot of wiggle room to deal with. Adding higher level scenarios for Clinton much like I did for Trump shows an interesting picture. This could be due to lack of reliable polling, so don't count on it, but it appears the GOP's southern support begins to crumble going into the +3 and +5 scenarios there. On the flip side, Clinton's edge has gotten stronger and Trump once again needs to get a total of +4 in the polls in swing states just to have a chance. Even then, his victory is much weaker than it was a week ago because Pennsylvania has become a stronger blue state in the past week. In order to take that, he needs a 5 point handicap, which also gives them Oregon.

Think about it, The electoral college as is leans toward Clinton, and for the amount of effort and resources Trump needs just to win, Clinton can more or less run the board and start stealing a lot of the GOP's core constituencies. For Trump to win by the same margin Clinton is expected to, he needs to win all states with less than a 6 point lead for Clinton. The GOP and Trump are in trouble this election. Unless he can make some serious dents in the swing states, he's screwed.

A note on election scenarios

For the record, I don't really take anything above the +2 threshold to be remotely possible, at least in the short term. Trends can change long term, but in the short term I have yet to see a presidential election where polling is off by more than a point or two. More often than not, it's spot on. So the +3 and above stuff is really there for demonstration purposes, and may at best have relevance to long term trends in these swing states. Even then, some of the states that flip there probably only do so because of weak polling there. I seriously expect Kentucky to go red, with Texas and Mississippi being republican strongholds this election.

Conclusion

Not much has really changed in the past week, but the changes that exist seem to be bad for Trump. He's going down in the national polls again and states like Pennsylvania are getting further out of reach. Even Nevada, which he looked like he was starting to acquire a lead in, is reverting back to toss up territory.

If last week, with the republican post convention bump and the division surrounding the democratic convention can't give Trump a win, I question if anything realistically can. We should never say never due to the possibility of October surprises, etc., but it really does look like he's screwed.

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