It is getting boring to keep saying “Republican getting stronger against Clinton”, but it is time for yet another update saying just that. As has been common lately, the Republican in question is Rubio, so lets look at these moves:
North Carolina
Look at that trend! It just gets worse and worse for Clinton. Every new poll in the last few months has been worse than the poll before. And with the latest, the average flips to Rubio’s side of the line.
North Carolina was never going to be a blow out for Clinton, but it was looking for awhile that she was in a good position to pull out a narrow win. That possibility seems to be evaporating quickly.
Michigan
There are less polls to back it up, but the move in Michigan is potentially more dramatic. In a few months the average has gone from a strong Clinton lead, to Michigan essentially being a toss up.
Once again, not a good trend for Clinton. Michigan has not gone Republican since voting for George HW Bush in 1988. In 5 of those 6 elections the winning margin for the Democrats was over 5%. In two of them it was over 10%. A close Michigan means a Clinton in trouble.
National Overview
Yes, if everybody wins the states where they are leading in my poll average, Clinton still wins… barely. But there are a HUGE number of states where it is close. In this matchup, nine states are in play and the range of possible outcomes is very wide. Right now Rubio’s best case (if he sweeps all the close states) is actually better than Clinton’s best case (if she sweeps the close states).
Clinton still has an advantage here, but just by the slimmest of margins. There is a long way to the election, but for the moment, at least in the Clinton vs Rubio matchup, this is a close race…
Other Candidates
So Rubio is doing well against Clinton, and that is the only one of the five best polled candidate combinations with a change today, but a quick look at the comparison is still useful.
Highlighting these two comparisons specifically because of the Rubio changes today, but similar trends show up for the other comparisons. Of the five best polled combinations, Bush and Rubio are standing out and have been dramatically improving their positions vs Clinton. Paul, Walker and Christie… have not. At least not lately. Of course, Walker has already dropped out at this point, and Christie and Paul are on life support, with their national Real Clear Politics polling averages at 3% or less right now. So they just aren’t getting the attention… or the polling volume lately… of Bush and Rubio.
As I’ve mentioned before, other candidates are getting a lot more attention now, but they are still way behind these five in the arbitrary polling quality metric I use. They just haven’t had enough sustained polling to get a comparable picture yet. That will change if the folks like Trump and Carson and Fiorina remain viable and folks like Paul, Walker and Christie fade away. Same thing for Sanders and Biden. It just takes a bit of time to get enough good state polls to start paying serious attention to the results in an analysis like this.
405.1 days until polls start to close.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.