This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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Today there was yet another poll in New Hampshire, this time from WMUR, as well as one in New Jersey from Monmouth.
Today’s changes actually lead to Clinton vs Walker bumping Clinton vs Rubio off my “five best polled candidate combinations” list, at least according to my metric.
Even though Clinton vs Rubio isn’t in the top five any more, since it WAS in the top five prior to this update, I’ll briefly cover the change.
Just like Bush and Paul improved their situation in New Hampshire polling yesterday, today’s poll data boosts Rubio in New Hampshire, and Clinton’s lead falls to less than 5%.
Notice the huge range here. Just within the last month, polls have ranged from Clinton up by 12% to Rubio up by 5%. That is a crazy range. I don’t feel a lot of confidence about what is really going on in New Hampshire. The average at the moment though puts New Hampshire in the “Weak Clinton” category vs Rubio, so Rubio’s best case improves:
This doesn’t put Rubio quite as close as Bush, but still puts his best case at losing to Clinton by only 18 electoral votes. So there are a couple of the Republicans now threatening to actually make a race out of this.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. 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.
New polls added today. The ones that make a difference are new results from Dartmouth in New Hampshire. Specifically, two of our top five candidate pairs get status changes:
Clinton vs Paul
The latest polling once again moves New Hampshire into “Weak Clinton” territory. New Hampshire has been in and out of this category since the 2014 elections, but longer term trend here seems to be away from Clinton, so it is certainly possible New Hampshire will stay here for awhile, but it would also not be surprising if the state continues to bounce in and out of this category. For now, New Hampshire is back in play and improves Paul’s “best case”:
New Hampshire is a little state. It is the little bump in the top right of the “realistically possible” bubble above. Paul’s best case is still a long way from winning. That is not not the case with Clinton vs Bush.
Clinton vs Bush
Bush’s improvement has been much more recent and sudden than Paul’s, so there is a greater chance this may just be a result of an outlier or two, and so it will be good to wait for confirmation from additional polls before thinking this is permanent, but for now, this is yet another state that has been moving Bushward…
Look at that spike! At the beginning of April, Bush’s best case was to lose to Clinton by 68 electoral votes. In the weeks since, Clintons lead in my poll average has declined to less than 5% in several states and now Bush’s best case is to lose by only 4 electoral votes! Yes, yes, this is still a loss, and this is still only assuming Bush can flip all of the states where Clinton is ahead by less than 5%, but this is still a big move. Bush only has to move one more state from the current “Strong Clinton” category into the “Weak Clinton” category to make his best case actually be to WIN.
Given current polling, the best candidates to try to reduce Clinton’s lead would be Minnesota (Clinton leads by 6.8%), Nevada (Clinton leads by 7.9%), Wisconsin (Clinton leads by 8.6%) or Ohio (Clinton leads by 9.2%). Making any one of those close would bring “Bush wins!” into the “possible bubble” for the first time since we’ve had any significant amount of 2016 polling.
Of course, after that, to really win, Bush needs to actually start flipping some more states to his side as opposed to just making them close.
But one thing at a time.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. 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.
Just a new batch of PPP polls in Iowa today. Two changes worthy of note:
Clinton vs Bush
Bush vs Clinton has been bopping up and down across the Clinton leads by 5% line. The average is now once again on the “Weak Clinton” side of this line… and the trend in the last few months seems to be in that direction. With this, we mark Iowa as “possible” for Bush and include it in his best case:
Why look there at that little peak stretching out over the past few weeks. This means that Bush’s best case is now to only lose by 12 electoral votes to Clinton. Bush only needs to get 6 more electoral votes worth of states to move into the “Weak Clinton” category to make his best case actually be to WIN. The best candidate right now is Minnesota (10 EV) where Clinton is ahead by 6.8%. (Minnesota also has only one Bush vs Clinton poll so far, and it was from October, so some new polling there is definitely needed… it may actually already be close, we just don’t have the polling to see it yet.)
Will this Bush surge in his “best case” continue? Will it start being followed by increases in his “expected case” as well? As usual, we await more polls to find out…
Clinton vs Rubio
The other major thing to come out of today’s polls, is that for the first time Clinton vs Rubio joins the “top five best polled candidate combinations” that I actively blog about, knocking off Clinton vs Ryan which hasn’t had new polling since Ryan announced he wasn’t going to run.
Since this combination is a new one for us to look at, rather than examining trends, lets look at the snapshot of where Clinton vs Rubio is right now:
So, not winning against Clinton, just like all the other Republicans at the moment. But lets look at some comparisons with the other well polled Republicans. Since the Republicans are all losing right now, the “expected case” isn’t as interesting. Lets look instead at the Republican “best cases” and the tipping points:
First the “best cases”. Rubio is second only to Bush (amongst the five best polled combinations) at how close things look if you give him all the close states. Bush loses by 12 electoral votes, Rubio loses by 26. (Going down the line, Huckabee loses by 84, Paul by 108, and Christie by 156.) This is all in the best case of course, the case where the Republican holds all of the states they are ahead in and also flips all the states where Clinton is ahead by less than 5%. A less than 5% lead is a slim on that can go away pretty quickly, or be wiped out by polling error, so this is an important metric to look at.
But if we want to look at “how far does the candidate have to move the polls to win” that is what the tipping point is all about, so moving on to that:
All five of the candidates here end up in “Strong Clinton” territory at the moment. Rubio is again doing second best of these five Republicans against Clinton. Clinton leads Bush by 6.8%, Rubio by 7.2%, Paul by 7.6%, Christie by 8.0%, and Huckabee by 8.1%. Within this comparison, Rubio doesn’t do all that badly against the field. It’s just that none of them are doing all that great.
Of course, this is the time to remind everybody that even though an 8% lead sounds huge, it means that only 4% of the voting public… or 1 person out of 25, needs to change their mind in order to flip the election. (Or the undecideds have to break solidly in favor of the challenger, or turnout heavily favors the challenger, etc.) Now, the American electorate is very strongly polarized right now. But is it that hard to imagine 1 out of 25 people changing their minds if a big scandal hits Clinton and sticks? Or the economy goes south before the election? Nope. It isn’t. This far out, anything can still happen. Views like this show where things stand NOW, not where they will be in 556 days.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. 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.
I added a bunch of new polls today, catching up after being preoccupied with something else the last few days.
The first thing to note is a change to the “top five best polled” candidate pairs. With the latest batch of polling, a well polled state (North Carolina) that had been really close in Clinton vs Walker became less close, and thus this combination slipped out of the top five, replaced by Clinton vs Ryan again. I expect this won’t last long, with one of Clinton vs Rubio, Clinton vs Cruz, or Clinton vs Walker once again jumping onto the top five very soon.
Within the top five candidate combinations, there were two changes of note this time:
Clinton vs Paul
The latest polling in Virginia from CNU improves Paul’s situation in Virginia from losing by 8.4% to only losing by 6.8%. This does not change Virginia’s categorization as a “Strong Clinton” state, but since Virginia was the tipping point state, it moves that metric:
With this the tipping point moves from Clinton leading in Virginia by 8.4% to Clinton leading by 7.6% in Ohio. This is a nice bump toward Paul. We’re still in “Strong Clinton” territory by this metric of course, but this continues a general trend of Paul’s tipping point against Clinton improving ever since last summer. Paul and Bush are the only two Republicans in the current five best polled combinations that can claim a positive trend against Clinton on this metric.
Clinton vs Bush
Once again it was the CNU Virginia poll making a difference. Clinton’s polling average lead vs Bush declines from 6.6% to 3.3% with this new poll. This moves Virginia from “Strong Clinton” to “Weak Clinton” and puts it back in play for Bush and improves his “best case” (which is where I give him not just the states he is ahead in, but all the states where Clinton is ahead by less than 5%):
This brings Bush’s best case to losing to Clinton by only 24 electoral votes. This is the best best case Bush has had since there was any real significant polling on 2016. Bush is currently doing better against than the other four Republicans in the five best polled combos in every metric I’m tracking. If he can make at least another 12 electoral votes close… say perhaps Iowa (6 EV) and Minnesota (10 EV)… the two “Strong Clinton” states that are the weakest for Clinton at the moment… then for the first time since early 2013 (when polling data was still sparse and we were mainly relying on previous elections) we’ll have a real race, where the Republican is actually in contention.
Others
Normally I wouldn’t mention combinations not in the top five, but since Clinton vs Walker just fell off with this update, I’ll briefly note that the news was mixed for him in today’s batch of polls. On the one hand, he improved in Virginia, which improved his tipping point. On the other hand, North Carolina flipped from Weak Walker to Weak Clinton, increasing the amount he would be expected to lose to Clinton by if each of them won all the states they were ahead in.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. 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.
Today there were tons of new polls added to my tracking site. The new polling once again put Clinton vs Paul as the “best polled” candidate pair combination, once again swapping places with Clinton vs Bush to be the default displayed on election2016.abulsme.com. But in the end there were only three status changes on the five candidate pairs with the best polling. Today all three of these changes favor Clinton.
Clinton vs Bush
A new Gravis poll in Iowa increases Clinton’s lead once again to over 5%:
This in turn lowers Bush’s best case from losing to Clinton by 38 electoral votes, to losing by 50 electoral votes:
Iowa has been bouncing back and forth over the line between Weak Clinton and Strong Clinton though, so don’t be surprised for this to change again as new polling comes out.
Clinton vs Christie
A new PPP poll in New Hampshire shows Christie trailing Clinton by 15%. Before this poll, the worst Christie had done in New Hampshire against Clinton was being behind by 5%. So this certainly looks like a potential outlier:
On the flip side, the last polling for Clinton vs Christie in New Hampshire was way back in July, and Christie has been slipping in almost every poll he appears in. So this may also be indicative of a real movement. As usual, the only way to confirm will be with additional polls.
For the moment, with the poll average showing a 5.6% Clinton lead, I remove New Hampshire from the “possible” list for Christie, which moves his best case from losing to Clinton by 100 electoral votes, to losing by 108 electoral votes:
The last time Christie saw any state change categories in his direction vs Clinton was more than a year ago in February 2014. Christie’s general election prospects seem dimmer and dimmer as time goes on. Of course, although I won’t track the nomination races until there are actual delegates to count, if you look at polling for the Republican nomination, you’ll note that the trends look the same there, so Christie may not have to worry that much about his general election prospects.
Clinton vs Huckabee
The same PPP poll in New Hampshire mentioned above is only the second Clinton vs Huckabee poll conducted in New Hampshire, but it is enough to move the average to a greater than 5% Clinton lead:
And this moves Huckabee’s best case against Clinton from losing by 76 electoral votes, to losing by 86 electoral votes:
Comparison
Looking at the “best case” of each of the five “best polled” challengers to Clinton over time:
Since the 2014 elections, Paul is flat. Bush, Christie, Huckabee and Walker are all down. Which means that so far, NONE of these candidates have actually been expanding the list of states that are actually in contention. Now, some other metrics have shown some movement toward some of these candidates, but this is a critical one. The Republicans can’t win without first making more currently blue states close.
Clinton vs Ryan, Clinton vs Rubio, and Clinton vs Cruz are the #6, #7 and #8 best polled candidate combinations. They are way behind the five above in polling quality by my metric, but feel free to take a look if any of those candidates are of interest… just interpret the results with caution.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. 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.
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