This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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I added some recent results from PPP in Pennsylvania today. PPP polled 13 candidate combinations. Of these only one resulted in a change worth noting in one of our top five best polled candidate combinations. (I consider it a change worth noting if the expected electoral result changes, or the “best case” of one of the two candidates changes, or the tipping point changes.)
Clinton vs Christie
The polling average (which actually contains 6 polls right now rather than the usual five since there is a tie for fifth oldest poll by middate) still shows Clinton with a “Strong” lead, but slightly less of a lead than before. The state doesn’t change categories though, it isn’t close to a “Weak Clinton” state. But it turns out that in Clinton vs Christie, Pennsylvania was the tipping point state, so the topping point changes.
For those who don’t remember, the tipping point is determined by sorting the states by the support level of the candidates, and then seeing which state is the one that would put the winning candidate over the edge. By then looking at the margin in that state, you see how far ahead polls would have to swing on a national basis to change the outcome of the election. In other words, this is a bit like looking at national popular vote numbers, but taking into account the structure of the electoral college. More than most of the other numbers I look at, this represents how far ahead (or behind) a candidate is.
In this case, the tipping point was Pennsylvania, where Clinton was ahead by 8.0%. With the new poll added, the tipping point is still Pennsylvania, but Clinton’s lead is down to 7.5%.
This is the first improvement for Christie in ANY of the metrics I track for Clinton vs Christie since February of last year. Is this the sign of a resurgence for Christie? I kind of doubt it. That ship may have sailed. But it may represent him getting to the point where he won’t get any lower.
The Others
It is worth looking at how some of the other candidates are doing in Pennsylvania though. Here are the Pennsylvania trends for the five best polled candidate combinations at the moment:
With Christie now enjoying an upward tick of his own, all five Republicans have been improving in Pennsylvania in the last month or so. Bush, Paul and Rubio are all better off than they were at the November elections as well. (Huckabee and Christie are still down from where they were at that point despite the bump in the last month.)
Some of the most recent individual polls in Pennsylvania actually have the state close for some of these candidates against Clinton, but the average isn’t there yet. It is showing movement though. So it is certainly possible we will see further polls confirm Pennsylvania getting closer. Pennsylvania is a big state (20 electoral votes). If Pennsylvania is in play, it opens up a lot more possibilities for the Republicans. So keep an eye on the polls here.
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’s new poll from Gravis in North Carolina scrambles up the “five best polled candidate combinations” by the metric I use a bit, with Clinton vs Huckabee now the “best polled”, followed by Clinton vs Bush, Clinton vs Paul, Clinton vs Christie and Clinton vs Rubio. (This is basically because Clinton vs Huckabee is now very close in a state that has been very well polled.)
That’s just bookkeeping though, there was one status change of note:
Clinton vs Paul
The newest poll in North Carolina bumps a poll from last October that had Paul ahead by 6% out of the poll average. With that poll gone, the average changes from Paul ahead by 0.2% to Clinton ahead by 1.4%. But the bottom line here is that all but one poll in the past year shows less than a 5% gap between Paul and Clinton. This is a close state. Yes, all but a few have shown Clinton ahead, so calling this “Weak Clinton” seems fair, even if you go beyond the last five polls. But it is close, and could flip back to Paul easily enough.
For now though, North Carolina returns to the Clinton side of the fence, and so the “Expected Case” moves 30 electoral votes toward Clinton:
With this Paul is back to losing to Clinton by 138 electoral votes, which is where he has been for most of the last year.
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.
Edit 15:20 UTC to fix a typo.
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.
Today I added results from PPP’s latest polling of North Carolina to my database. They polled 11 different candidate combinations, but only one of these resulted in a significant change to one of the five best polled candidate combinations. So lets hit that quickly:
Clinton vs Huckabee
Yup, that newest poll may or may not prove to be an outlier, but that looks like a real trend, with Huckabee gaining a lot of ground vs Clinton over the last year, and now Huckabee takes the lead, just barely. This changes Huckabee’s expected result vs Clinton:
Huckabee’s “expected” result where he wins all of the states he is ahead in is now to lose to Clinton by 332 to 206… losing by 126 electoral votes… which is exactly the same as Romney’s loss to Obama. Right now, looking at the five best polled candidate combinations, Bush and Paul both do better than this, with Bush losing by 98 electoral votes and Paul losing by 108. Christie on the other hand does worse, losing by 156. But what about the 5th candidate combination? This brings up the other big news of the day, namely, the debut of Clinton vs Walker in my “Top 5”.
Clinton vs Walker
The new batch of polling added today causes a big improvement for Clinton vs Walker in my metric to measure polling quality. There is plenty to quibble with on how I construct this metric, namely that it might be overly sensitive to the situation in states that are VERY close in the poll averages, and I second guess it myself all the time, but it is “good enough” for these purposes. With today’s update, Clinton vs Walker jumps past Clinton vs Cruz, Clinton vs Rubio and Clinton vs Ryan to take the #5 spot in my top five ranking.
Looking at the historical trend charts for Clinton vs Walker wouldn’t really tell us too much. At this point those don’t really show real “trends” they just show the process of slowly getting enough polling to show where Clinton vs Walker really is, rather than having the map based mostly on the average of the 1996-2012 elections. So instead lets just look at a snapshot of NOW:
  
So where does Walker start out? 332-206. Matching the Obama vs Romney result. Matching Huckabee. Not doing as well as Bush or Paul, but not as badly as Christie. At least in terms of the “Expected” result.
Now, even though Walker makes it on to the Top 5 best polled list, that doesn’t mean polling is super robust. Only two states (Iowa and Wisconsin) actually have more than the five polls I usually use in my averages, and they aren’t even close states. (Hillary is ahead by over 8% in both.) Every other state is still relying to some degree on the results in the 1996-2012 elections to provide a baseline in the absence of actual Clinton vs Walker polls. Sixteen states have at least one Clinton vs Walker poll though, and a good number of those have several polls at this point, so we have enough to start paying attention.
On Walker’s map right now there are only four “close” states: Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina and Missouri. The current “shortest path” to a Walker win is for him to win those four states, plus pull Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Mexico and Virginia over from the “Strong Clinton” category, first into contention as a close state, and then over to his side. The tipping point is Virginia, where Clinton’s lead is currently 6.6%.
6.6% seems like a pretty big lead. But the events of a long campaign can and do erase leads like that. Remember the crucial point that this far out polls are NOT predictive of the final result, instead, they essentially just show how much work the losing candidate needs to do (or how much the leading candidate needs to screw up) in order to flip the result. Another way of looking at a 6.6% lead is that 3.3% of people need to change their minds. Or the undecided need to break strongly in favor of the challenger. (My model just looks at the margin between the polling of the two candidates, and doesn’t take into account the size of the undecided pool at all.) In that context, 3.3% doesn’t seem quite as formidable.
Clinton has a strong lead here. Catching up and winning will take some hard work or good luck for Walker. But it is certainly possible. 577 days is a long 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.
Today’s big poll dump was from Quinnipiac, in the latest of their “Swing State Poll” series. This edition features polls from Colorado, Iowa and Virginia and is given the headline “Paul Blooms As Clinton Wilts“. That sounds pretty strong. But lets see how that headline holds up when we look at today’s updates in the context of poll averages rather than just results from one pollster, and looking beyond just the individual states with my method of classifying states.
Quinnipiac tested seven candidate combinations, but only four of those are in the “five best polled candidate combinations” by the measure I use here, so those are the ones I will talk about today. That would be Clinton vs Bush, Paul, Christie and Huckabee. (The fifth combo on the top five, Clinton vs Ryan, hasn’t been polled by anyone since February, but Cruz, Rubio and Walker, the next three by my metric, and also the others polled by Quinnipiac, still haven’t had enough polling to catch up and pass Ryan.)
So of those four, what were the actual changes in my models? There were changes for three candidate pairs. In all three cases the changes favored the Republican.
Clinton vs Bush
With today’s update, Clinton vs Bush once again becomes the “best polled” candidate combination by my metric, taking the spot from Bush vs Paul and thus becoming the default view on election2016.abulsme.com.
More importantly though, with today’s updates Clinton’s lead in the polling averages in both Colorado and Iowa dropped below 5%, putting those states back into play as “close states” that we consider possible for Bush to win. With these two back in play, Bush’s best case improves from Clinton 303 to Bush 235 before the update, to Clinton 288 to Bush 250 now, a loss by only 38 electoral votes. You can see the uptick in the top right part of the “bubble” representing the reasonable range of outcomes for Bush against Clinton given current polling:
Clinton vs Paul
No states changed categories for Paul, despite the headline about Paul “blooming”. His average in Virginia however did improve from losing by 8.8% to only losing by 8.4%. This in turn moved his “tipping point margin”, a measure of how much polls need to move nationally to flip the electoral college, from being behind by 8.5% (with Wisconsin being the tipping point state) to being behind by 8.4% (with Virginia as the new tipping point state). This is the third tipping point change in a row in Paul’s direction. Almost starting to look like a trend.
Clinton vs Huckabee
With the new results from Quinnipiac, Clinton’s lead against Huckabee in Iowa falls from 6.6% to 4.6%. That’s a rather big drop, and it makes Iowa once again a “possible” for Huckabee. So his best case moves from losing by 88 electoral votes, to only losing by 76 electoral vote. You can see this at the top right of his “bubble”:
State Comparisons
Now, while Clinton does weaken in each of the three cases above, none of this really seems to justify the “Paul Blooms as Clinton Wilts” headline on the national level. But of course these polls weren’t at the national level. The headline was really specifically about the three states polled. So lets look at how each of the candidate pairs in question are doing in these three states specifically. In each one, just look at the very last change in the lines to see how this new poll result affected the averages. (All the charts in this section also include Clinton vs Ryan, but that line can be safely ignored, since Ryan wasn’t included in these polls.)
So, in order of the number of electoral votes:
Bush, Christie and Huckabee actually fell further behind in Virginia as a result of this new polling. Paul was the only one of the four who actually improved in Virginia, reducing his deficit from 8.8% to 8.4% in my average. None of the four candidates made a move that changed the category though. Virginia is “Strong Clinton” against all four of these candidates, and this polling didn’t change that. Paul does stand out here though, by being the only one improving against Clinton.
In Colorado all four of the candidates improve against Clinton as a result of the Quinnipiac poll. Bush actually moves into the white zone here, which as was mentioned earlier, means that the state is now a possible win for him. But this actually just brings Bush back in line with the rest of the pack. Colorado is a close state for all of these candidates.
Paul stands out in Colorado too, but not for the recent movement, but because he is the only one of these candidates who is showing that he could turn Colorado red again. (Colorado went blue for Obama in both 2012 and 2008, but was red in 2004, 2000 and 1996.) This is not new though. Paul has been consistently leading in the Colorado poll average against Clinton for over a year.
Bush, Paul and Huckabee all improved in Iowa, with Bush and Huckabee of course moving Iowa back into competitive territory, where Paul already was. Christie fell a bit further behind.
With all of the above, the moves were definitely not friendly to Clinton on the whole, but “wilting” looks like hyperbole. And while Paul does well here, so do Bush and Huckabee, arguably with moves just as significant as Paul’s if not more so.
So where does Quinnipiac get their headline?
Well, duh, they are only looking at their own polls. They are comparing their most recent results in these three states with the results of the last time they polled these three states back in February. I’m sure if you look at things with only that lens, it looks like exactly what they say it does. But you are ignoring a lot of data if you do that.
For instance, looking at only Quinnipiac data in Iowa, you see a move from Clinton having an 8.0% lead in February, to Paul being ahead by 1% now. Huge move, right? Massive momentum away from Clinton and toward Paul, right?
Lets look at the chart showing all the Clinton vs Paul polls in Iowa, not just Quinnipiac:
Hmmm… where did the trend go? Now, there have only been three polls so far in 2015, and it is true that each one has been better for Paul than the one before. But looking at the history of polling Clinton vs Paul in Iowa since the 2012 election, you see that the results are all over the place. There is huge scatter here. The results bounce all over the place. And so far, there has not been any sort of clear trend at all.
Yes, the new Quinnipiac poll looks great for Paul. He’s beating Clinton in Iowa! But there was a poll about a year ago that said that too. It wasn’t backed up by other polls though and wasn’t the sign of a big trend toward Paul. It was just more random variation. It wasn’t real.
Could this new poll be the first signs of a real long term movement? Maybe. Maybe not.
Kids, this is why we look at poll averages instead of individual polls.
If there is an actual big movement toward Paul, or any of the other Republican candidates, we’ll know soon enough as more and more polls start showing that movement. But no such clear trend is visible yet for any of the candidates with the most polling.
(I mentioned at the top that right now Clinton vs Cruz is the 6th best polled combo, Clinton vs Rubio is at #7, and Clinton vs Walker is at #8. You can click through on those links if you want to see what those look like at the moment. The amount of state level polling still isn’t great on those guys, so interpret the charts carefully.)
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.
In my update today I added polling data from Quinnipiac (7 candidate combinations in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania), Gravis (5 candidate combinations in Nevada), and Saint Leo (5 candidate combinations in Florida). This resulted in a variety of status changes, but only a handful that meet my threshold for talking about here, which is that either the electoral college summary or the tipping point needs to change for one of the five best polled candidate pairs.
First off, there has been very little polling in Nevada thus far, but the new polling in Nevada moved both Clinton vs Paul and Clinton vs Christie from “Weak Clinton” to “Strong Clinton” as the polling average moved to a greater than 5% Clinton lead. They join Clinton vs Bush, which was already in that zone. (Clinton vs Huckabee and Ryan, the other two of the top five best polled candidate combinations, have not been polled at all in Nevada.)
So here’s what Paul’s electoral college trends look like at the moment vs Clinton:
And here’s Christie vs Clinton:
In both of these, you can see the slight dip at the top right of the “envelope of possibility” representing Nevada no longer being included in the “best case” for the Republican.
The moves mentioned above for Nevada are the only two cases in today’s updates where the actual electoral college summaries changed. (Well, of the top five best polled candidate combinations anyway.)
But we’ll also mention it here if there are changes to the tipping point margin. As a reminder, the tipping point margin is basically how much you would have to shift the results in ALL states in order to change the electoral college winner. Basically, it is like looking at the national popular vote, but taking into account the structure of the electoral college, so you’re looking at how much things have to move to change the electoral college outcome, not just the winner of the popular vote. (Which as 2000 showed, do not necessarily go together.)
So, those changes…
First off Clinton vs Bush. With today’s added polling and Nevada getting bluer, the tipping point moves from Clinton by 6.2% in Virginia, to Clinton by 6.8% in Minnesota.
Then Clinton vs Huckabee. Ohio moves further toward Clinton, and the topping point shifts from Clinton by 8.0% in Virginia, to Clinton by 8.1% in Ohio.
Finally, the one move in the directions of the Republicans today. Ohio moved in Paul’s direction with todays update… the poll average went from a 9.2% Clinton lead to a 7.6% Clinton lead, which was enough to move the tipping point from Clinton by 8.8% in Virginia to Clinton by 8.5% in Wisconsin.
Lets look a second at the comparison of the tipping point for all five of the best polled candidate pairs:
Since the November elections, we have Bush and Paul up while Christie and Huckabee are down. (No movement on Ryan, but there has been sparse polling on him since he said he was not running… we still have better polling on Ryan than on Cruz, Rubio or Walker though.)
So, there has been some press lately on how Clinton’s email issues have hurt her at the polls. There has also been press saying it hasn’t had any significant effect. National polls would of course register short term changes much much more quickly that the state polling I look at here, where even the best polled states only get polled a little more than once a month. It really is too soon for effects of that particular thing to show strongly in the kind of analysis I do here. Until we get to the last few months before the election, you’ll be able to see long term trends here, but not short term reactions to individual events in the news cycle. For the moment, there aren’t any strong trends here to call out. There has been movement, but not a whole lot, and it depends on which Republican you look at.
For the top five candidate pairs, the overall situation now looks like this:
One comparison that I haven’t done in awhile here is looking at these numbers vs 2012. The final result in 2012 was Obama 332 to Romney 206, or Obama by 126.
So while all five Republicans here are currently well behind Clinton in the expected electoral college outcome, both Bush and Paul are doing better against Clinton than Romney did against Obama!!
So while Clinton still has a healthy lead here, we’re nowhere near landslide territory or anything like that. Remember that a 10% tipping point margin (a relatively huge lead) still means the results of the election can be flipped if just 5% of the people change their minds (or don’t turn up to vote, or whatever).
If this was a few days before the election and Clinton had these kinds of numbers, it would be foolish to bet against her winning. But it is 587 days until the election. There is a long long way to go. Polls at this stage are NOT predictive of the results at the end of the process. They are only a snapshot of what things look like TODAY, which gives you an idea how much work the candidate that is behind would have to do to win. (Or alternately, how much the candidate who is ahead can afford to screw up.)
As I mentioned in my last update there is a lot of interest in a few other candidates too. Right now Clinton vs Cruz is the 6th best polled combo, Clinton vs Rubio is at #7, and Clinton vs Walker is at #8. You can click through on those links if you want to see what those look like at the moment. But the amount of state level polling on those guys still isn’t that great (although they are catching up), so take what you see there with a big lump of salt.
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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