- 21:30:30 This week’s podcast only has a tiny bit on the election in the last segment, but you should all listen anyway. :-) https://t.co/Vx9eWPtsUv
For once this is an update with good news for Clinton! Specifically, the latest Florida poll brings the state back into reach…
Well, into reach against Bush. Bush hasn’t been having the best time of things lately. But Bush now leads Clinton by only 4.2% in our average, so we consider Florida one of those states that could go either way. Meanwhile though, against Rubio…
With this latest poll Rubio’s lead grows to just barely over 5%, so once again we take it out of the “possible” list for Clinton. So Clinton gains Florida as a possible pickup against Bush, but loses it agains Rubio. Is that a wash over all? Probably. It is also worth noting though that in both of these cases the averages are very close to the 5% boundary between the actually pretty arbitrary “Weak” and “Strong” categories. It should not be surprising if the next polls just reverse today’s changes. For the moment though:
The “expected” cases, where each candidate just wins the states they lead in the average, remain Clinton winning by 48 electoral votes against Bush, and losing by 2 electoral votes against Rubio. 369.1 days until the first 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. And like Election Graphs on Facebook!
It may well be that Clinton bottomed out and is now strengthening daily in the Democratic primary race, but her declines have not stopped on the general election front… at least not yet. The latest batch of polling shows her continuing to weaken against Rubio, in North Carolina this time:
The trend toward Rubio has continued for over 5 months now. With this latest update, the poll average has Rubio with a 5.2% lead. That is enough for us to take North Carolina out of the list of states that could go either way, and just give it to Rubio. For the moment anyway. Insert here the usual reminder of just how far it is until the election and how things can change quickly. In any case, this weakens Clinton’s “best case” a bit, leaving us with this:
Clinton losing North Carolina from her “maybe” column makes this already close matchup look even closer. Right now Rubio does better against Clinton than any of the other “five best polled” candidates, and that race is neck and neck. We haven’t looked at a map in awhile here, so a quick look at what a neck and neck race with the Republican just barely eking out a win looks like:
Looks like a lot more red than blue, but a lot of the red states have fewer electoral votes, which is of course why you have to look at the numbers, not just the map. Going forward, the main question is does Clinton stop her slide and start showing improved performance against Rubio and the other Republicans. With Biden out and Sanders seemingly at a plateau, Clinton can concentrate her efforts on the general election. She seems to be on a roll the last few weeks, turning around her primary poll numbers and for the first time in many months getting a lot of positive press. The unforced self-inflicted errors have not been present for a little while. This has done what it needed to amongst Democrats. I suspect that if Clinton doesn’t do anything to damage herself, and the Republicans continue as they are, we will indeed start to see some of the states that have moved away from Clinton over the past few months start drifting back. As usual though, actual events may vary. 376.1 days until the general election polls start to close. Stay tuned. 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. And like Election Graphs on Facebook!
As I mentioned yesterday, Christie is seemingly still in the Republican race. There hadn’t been any state level polls that included him since August, but then yesterday there was one in Virginia that improved his position against Clinton. And now in today’s update we have another poll that included him, this time PPP in Pennsylvania, and once again the result is an improvement in Christie’s position vs Clinton.
This makes Pennsylvania a possible pickup for Christie and thus improves his “best case” scenario even further.
I snarked yesterday about how Christie’s best case was to lose by 70 electoral votes. Well, now his best case is to lose by 30 electoral votes. So he actually is getting a lot closer to being in reach. Of course I also made fun of his 1.9% in the RCP average of national Republican polls… oops, it is 1.7% now. Clinton vs Christie is still the 5th “best polled” candidate combination according to the metric I use, but I expect that will probably change before too long as we continue to get more and more polls including Trump, Carson, Fiorina and Cruz, with fewer including Christie. Not to mention more with Sanders and Biden. They all seem to have gotten more polling action lately, but not yet enough to bring them into the “top five” I talk about here. There are still significant gaps in close state polling for those candidates, but those are gradually being filled in. To briefly illustrate why I don’t talk about all the candidate combinations here, the new polling in Pennsylvania from PPP yesterday actually resulted in all of these changes:
Those are all tweets from @ElecCollPolls. That account tweets each and every electoral college related change on ElectionGraphs.com, including each individual poll result as it is added. If you are interested in that level of detail, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter. But be careful interpreting what you see beyond the five best polled combinations I highlight here. There is often still very sparse polling, certainly when compared with the top five, and the averages still rely quite a lot on previous general election results, so it may or may not yet be giving a good picture of where things really stand for that candidate pair. You can still get some insight of course, you just have to be careful. Here on the blog, I concentrate on the candidate pairs with the most robust polling, and on the changes that impact the range of possible results for those candidates. These “top five” candidate pairs are really where the amount of data available is best and where I can feel the most confident drawing conclusions from the data… and even then you sometimes have to be careful reading too much into things. After all, it is still 389.1 days until polls start to close. Things will change a lot in those days. Which is why tracking this is fun. Keep watching. 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. And like Election Graphs on Facebook! |
||
