This week on the Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast Sam and Ivan start out with an old fashioned lightning round covering the Olympics, Gawker, EpiPens and more. Then of course they settle in to talk about this week’s developments in the race for the Presidency. Looking for your weekly fix of Clinton and Trump craziness? We have it for you here as always. Oh, and Sam complains about cars on the beach and annual reviews.
Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!
Recorded 2016-08-25
Length this week – 1:32:06
1-Click Subscribe in iTunes View Podcast in iTunes View Raw Podcast Feed Download MP3 File Follow the podcast on Facebook
Show Details:
(0:00:10-0:10:04) But First
Exhausted Ivan
Agenda
Sam Beach Trip
Work Reviews
(0:12:03-0:34:05) Lightning Round!
No disasters at the Olympics
Time Delayed Olympics
Gawker Shutdown
Louisiana Flooding
EpiPen Pricing
NSA Hacked
Proxima Centuri B
(0:35:14-0:56:44) Clinton Stuff
Clinton Email Again
Clinton Foundation Again
Clinton Health
(0:57:23-1:31:46) Trump Stuff
Trump on Immigration
Phil is Thirsty
Trump pivoting?
Trump’s appeal to African-Americans
Trump supporter racial anxiety
Trump sticking to the script
FAU Florida Poll
Fake Polls
The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.
States with new poll data since the last update: Florida, Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina
In the last update, Clinton’s lead in Florida moved to more than 5% and therefore winning Florida was taken out of Trump’s best case. At the time, I said: “Now, a couple of the data points here look like they might end up being outliers. If so, expect the average to bounce back a bit in Trump’s direction as new polls come out.” That has indeed already happened…
After several polls showing Clinton with a very strong lead, the last few results have shown Trump with a narrow lead. So the average bounces back toward Trump. On balance, Clinton still leads, but now only by 4.5%. Since this is under 5% Florida once again looks like a possible Trump pick up and is included in Trump’s best case:
Trump’s best case is still too lose, but with Florida in the mix it is a lot closer. If Trump wins all the states he is ahead in, plus all the states where he is close, he now loses by only 8 electoral votes.
Since Florida was the tipping point, that metric also moves:
The tipping point is now back at a 6.0% Clinton lead in Connecticut, back where it was a couple weeks ago.
So does this mean Trump is bouncing back? We have had a couple of moves toward Trump in the last couple weeks… but we have had even more moves toward Clinton. It is too early to call a bottom for Trump and say he is on his way back. As usual, we need to keep watching.
74.4 days left until polls start to close.
Notice on Methodology: In my August 13th update I solicited opinions on possibly changing how this site deals with the case when a pollster releases multiple results from a single poll. See the discussion in that comment thread for more details. This weekend I will be working to change the site logic so that if two results are released from a poll, each counts as only half a poll for purposes of the averages here. As an example of the impact that would have: With the current method Florida shows a 4.5% Clinton lead. With the proposed new method Florida would show a 4.8% Clinton lead. Both would be “Weak Clinton”.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the tip jar.
States with new poll data since the last update: Ohio, Iowa, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Utah, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico
More bad news for Trump, this time from Florida and South Carolina:
Florida
As has been somewhat the normal state of things in Florida, there is a huge range of poll results. At the moment the Election Graphs average includes results from Clinton leading by 14.5% to Trump leading by 2%. But on average, the polls have been trending toward Clinton, and with the latest additions, Clinton’s lead increases to 8.1%. Now, a couple of the data points here look like they might end up being outliers. If so, expect the average to bounce back a bit in Trump’s direction as new polls come out.
For the moment though, Clinton’s lead is big enough that Florida is no longer looking like a possible pickup for Trump. And Florida is part of almost any winning scenario for Trump. Without Florida a path to the White House is almost impossible.
South Carolina
Meanwhile, Trump is also slipping in South Carolina:
South Carolina hadn’t been polled much, but prior to the conventions the average there was a 7.8% Trump lead. Every poll since the conventions has shown Trump with a much narrower lead though. To be sure, there has not yet been any poll showing Clinton ahead in South Carolina. But the poll average drops to a 2.4% Trump lead. Narrow enough that Clinton stealing it has to be allowed as a possibility.
National View
With Florida no longer in play for Trump, and South Carolina now in play for Clinton, the “bubble” now looks like this:
Trump’s best case is now almost as bad as it was back in June. Clinton’s best case is now the best it has been aside from those two days in June when Texas looked close.
The most dramatic change however has been in the tipping point. With Clinton’s lead in Florida increasing dramatically, the tipping point moved from a 6.0% Clinton lead in Connecticut to an 8.1% Clinton lead in Florida:
There were actually two Florida polls in today’s update, the second one was more favorable to Trump, so you see above that the tipping point actually dipped down as far as a 8.7% Clinton lead before bouncing back to 8.1%.
The tipping point can be thought of as how much the polls in every state would have to move (if they all moved together) to flip the winner of the race. It is essentially the equivalent of looking at the national popular vote margin, but adjusted to take into account the structure of the electoral college. The downward trend here is brutal for Trump.
The center of the spectrum of states now looks like this:
And the overall summary like this:
Even if you give Trump all of the close states, he still loses by 66 electoral votes.
Trump is currently losing, and losing badly. Even if he managed movement along the lines of what he saw from mid-June until the conventions, it would only get him back to having a narrow win in his best case scenario. He would still have quite some way to go in order to actually lead.
Things do happen in campaigns, but a comeback from this far behind would take an absolutely seismic change in how this campaign is going… and there are only 75.7 days left.
Notice on Methodology: In my August 13th update I solicited opinions on possibly changing how this site deals with the case when a pollster releases multiple results from a single poll. See the discussion in that comment thread for more details. I’ve concluded that I do want to make a change to re-weight those cases, so that if two results are released from a poll, each counts as only half a poll for purposes of the averages here. I am going to try to adjust the site this coming weekend to make this change. Although the overall picture will remain similar, some states will “jiggle”. For instance, with the current method the average in South Carolina is a 2.4% Trump lead. The drop to that level was one of the items highlighted in today’s post. But the five poll average includes 2 results from a Feldman poll and 2 from a Gravis poll. If the average was calculated in the proposed new way South Carolina would show a 5.4% Trump lead. So it would move back to being “Strong Trump” rather than “Weak Trump” because there would be less weight on the post-convention polls showing a close race, and two additional older polls showing a strong Trump lead would be included in the average. If all goes well, I’ll make a post about the new methodology and any resulting changes to the classifications of the states and such after the surgery on the site is complete. If my changes fail, I’ll roll things back and try again another weekend. :-)
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the tip jar.
On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner most of the show is of course on Election 2016… some talk about the Clinton foundation and lots and lots of discussion of all the twists and turns in Trump world this week. But hey, almost half the show is actually on other things! We talk about those swimmers getting in trouble in Brazil, about Iran and Syria, about self-driving cars, about Obamacare, and even about adjustable beds! Also, a short remembrance of John McLaughlin and what he meant to this show. Enjoy!
Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!
Recorded 2016-08-19
Length this week – 2:12:32
1-Click Subscribe in iTunes View Podcast in iTunes View Raw Podcast Feed Download MP3 File Follow the podcast on Facebook
Show Details:
(0:00:10-0:16:14) But First
Agenda
Adjustable Bed
Upgraded Podcast Setup
Sam Trip Coming Up
John McLaughlin
(0:16:58-0:40:04) Stuff that isn’t the Election Part 1
Swimmers in Brazil
Omran from Syria
Iran Payment
(0:41:07-0:57:29) Stuff that isn’t the Election Part 2
Uber Self-Driving Ride Sharing
Aetna and Obamacare
(0:58:49-1:33:08) Stuff that is the Election Part 1
States with new poll data since the last update: Georgia, Nevada
For the first time this month, we have a categorization change that goes in Trump’s direction. This time it is in Georgia:
With new polling, two of the three results showing a Clinton lead in Georgia roll off the average, replaced by results showing Trump ahead. The average in the state moves to a 0.4% Trump lead. This is an incredibly narrow lead. Georgia really could go either way. But for the moment, Georgia is once again on the more familiar red side of the center line.
With this, the “expected” result, where each candidate just wins all the states they are ahead in, returns to Clinton 347 to Trump 191, a 156 electoral vote win for Clinton. Still clearly in the zone where Trump does better than McCain (192 electoral vote loss) but worse than Romney (126 electoral vote loss).
Does this indicate Trump has bottomed and is now on the rebound? Well… Georgia is a state that has looked close for months. The polls bounce around quite a bit. A move from a 0.8% Clinton lead to a 0.4% Trump lead may not be super significant. It may flip back with the very next poll. So as usual, use caution in interpreting a move like this. If it is followed up by more good news for Trump, then we can start talking about a Trump rebound. For now, that is still premature.
81.1 days left until the polls start to close.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the tip jar.
States with new poll data since the last update: New Hampshire, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Texas, Virginia, Washington, New York, Michigan, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Mississippi
The Trump deterioration continues. This time in the form of weakening in Missouri:
The range in Missouri results is large in the 1.2 months of polling currently used in the average… from Trump up by 10%, to Clinton up by 1%. But the last four polls before the end of the Republican convention all showed Trump up by more than 5%. The three polls taken after the Republican convention ended have all been worse for Trump.
So Trump’s lead in the poll average drops to 4.8%, and Missouri moves from “Strong Trump” to “Weak Trump”. Trump is still ahead, but it is now close enough that we allow the possibility of Clinton winning Missouri in her “best case”.
Clinton’s best case is now to win 384 to 154, a 230 electoral vote margin. This is the best number Clinton has seen on this metric aside from a two day period in June where Texas looked close for a moment.
Trump may stop sliding in the polls, or maybe even reverse the trend, but we’re not seeing that yet. For the moment, his collapse continues.
82.3 days until polls start to close on election day.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the tip jar.
States with new poll data since the last update: Utah, Georgia, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Kansas, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Texas, South Carolina, Maine (All), New York, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado
There have been tons of polls lately, but most of them didn’t cause any change to the analysis here. The exception this time was Virginia:
Virginia had been hovering at just about the 5% Clinton lead line since May. A poll taken during the convention weeks gave Trump his biggest lead ever in Virginia. This put Virginia on the close state list. Post convention though, both Marist and YouGov polls have shown Clinton with double digit leads. This moves the average from a 3.9% Clinton lead to a 7.5% Clinton lead.
And so Virginia disappears from Trump’s “best case” where we assume he wins not only the states he leads, but also steals all the states where Clinton’s lead is under 5%.
Trump’s “best case” is now to lose to Clinton by 8 electoral votes. A narrow loss, but a loss none the less. To win, Trump not only has to pull all the close states to his side, he has to start winning in some states where Clinton has a substantial lead at the moment.
This is even more striking on the chart of the tipping point. Virginia was the tipping point, and when Clinton’s lead there moved, the tipping point also moved dramatically.
The tipping point moves from Clinton +3.9% in Virginia to Clinton +6.0% in Connecticut. Connecticut! We have a situation where it might be CONNECTICUT that puts Clinton over the edge. Not Ohio, not Florida, not any other traditional swing state… but Connecticut. Clinton’s tipping point lead still isn’t as good as it was back in mid-June, but it is getting close.
The center of the spectrum of states now looks like this:
And the national summary like this:
This isn’t a Clinton landslide, but it is looking like a very solid Clinton win. Trump needs to reverse his slide to get back in the game. Let alone to win. So far Election Graphs has NEVER shown a Trump win as the expected result, and right now isn’t even showing Trump in serious contention.
But the graphs above do show that things can swing quickly based on what is happening in the campaign and in the world. So we of course all have to keep watching. 87.1 days until polls start to close.
Opinions Wanted! For the data geeks out there, I’ve been having discussions with a few readers about how I handle it when a single pollster releases multiple results. For instance, in the case above, Marist took one poll, but asked about both Clinton vs Trump (Clinton leads by 13%), and Clinton vs Trump vs Johnson vs Stein (Clinton leads by 12%). Currently, in the interest of keeping things as simple as possible, and also of including everything, I just include both of these data points as if they were completely separate. Of course they are not. The same people were asked both questions. They are not independent results, and are usually closely grouped. So I’m in effect double weighting Marist compared to YouGov, who only released one result (Clinton vs Trump vs Johnson in this case). This also makes my normal “five poll average” often include less than five separate pollsters and cover a smaller time period than it would otherwise. Most other sites in these cases pick ONE of the reported results and ignore the others completely. There are other possible ways to handle this as well. I’m considering if I should make changes to how polls are counted on Election Graphs to address this concern, and if so which changes. If you have an opinion, please let me know in the comments or email me directly at abulsme@abulsme.com. Thanks!
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the tip jar.
With Trump not currently doing all that well in the polls at the moment, there has been occasional chatter that maybe we’re not just looking at a Trump loss, but a Clinton landslide.
But what exactly is a landslide? There isn’t a really precise definition. Wikipedia says “A landslide victory is an electoral victory in a political system, when one candidate or party receives an overwhelming majority of the votes or seats in the elected body, thus all but utterly eliminating the opponents.”
That’s nice, but not very mathematical. I suppose you could define it in terms of absolute numbers “Landslide is over 80% of the vote” or something like that. But I think you should look in terms of the results in comparison to other elections.
So let me take a shot at defining a landslide in terms of being in the top X% of the elections in terms of the margin of victory. I figured I’d look at US presidential elections and what that would look like at 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%.
Or course there are also two ways of looking at US Presidential elections, by popular vote and by electoral college. So lets look at both. I’ll rank by simple percentage margin, so (winner-loser)/total.
Popular Vote
2016 will be the 49th presidential election where there was a popular vote tally (since 1824)
5% biggest wins would be the top 2. Margin to be a landslide = 25.22% (Coolidge 1924)
10% biggest wins would be the top 4. Margin to be a landslide = 23.14% (Nixon 1972)
15% biggest wins would be the top 7. Margin to be a landslide = 18.21% (Reagan 1984)
20% biggest wins would be the top 9. Margin to be a landslide = 17.76% (Roosevelt 1932)
5% biggest wins would be the top 2. Margin to be a landslide = 97.0% (Roosevelt 1936)
10% biggest wins would be the top 5. Margin to be a landslide = 84.1% (Jefferson 1804)
15% biggest wins would be the top 8. Margin to be a landslide = 80.7% (Johnson 1964)
20% biggest wins would be the top 10. Margin to be a landslide = 72.3% (Eisenhower 1956)
Clinton vs Trump
As of right now (August 12th), estimating via current polls:
Popular Vote margin (using Pollster.com average) = Clinton by 7.7%. This would rank as #25 out of 49. Almost exactly in the middle.
Electoral Vote margin (using Election Graphs expected case) = Clinton by 188/538 = 34.9%. This would rank as #32 out of 54. Just below the middle.
If current margins hold, neither of these measures are even close to being in the top 20% in terms of how big a victory it would be. Really, it looks more like it is pretty close to a median win, with about half of elections being bigger wins, and about half being closer.
Now, we have 88 days left. In a normal election we would expect it would probably get tighter between now and November. With Trump being Trump, maybe it will go the other way a bit further.
But Clinton’s lead would have to increase by a LOT to make this election rank with the big landslides of the past.
Some people have argued that with today’s highly polarized landscape, we need to redefine landslide downward, so a much smaller win can be called a landslide. While many people may indeed end up doing that if Clinton wins by the kinds of margins seen above, I think this is silly. A win that is right near the median historically is not a landslide. Sorry.
The truth is just that we are in a time where the public is relatively closely divided… which means the environment is not very conducive to a true landslide win. Given where we are, winning the popular vote by over 7%, or the electoral college by over 180 electoral votes, may indeed be a very impressive achievement. A bigger win than might be expected even.
States with new poll data since the last update: Virginia, Nevada, Arizona
The polls keep coming, as they will straight through November. This time there is one change of note, reversing the movement in Nevada from a few days ago.
The polls making up the average still range from Clinton +4.0% to Trump +5.0%. There is wide variance here. The latest poll moves the average to Clinton +0.6%. So just on the Clinton side of the line again. In the end though, the best we can really say is that Nevada could easily go either way given current polling.
For the moment though, Nevada is back on the Clinton side of the center line.
This changes the “expected case” where everybody wins all the states where they lead the polls to Clinton 363 Trump 175, a 188 electoral vote margin for Clinton.
This is Clinton’s best showing in the expected case, tying a brief period in May. The other metrics are not at record levels at the moment, but this is the most important of the metrics tracked here… the actual expected outcome of the election.
The time since the conventions ended has been very good for Clinton. So far. We’ll see how long the trend continues. Clinton may well be near a ceiling here. At this point further gains for Clinton would be involve pulling in states like Arizona, Texas, or Utah. Those states are much closer that was once expected, but they may be very hard to pull in that last little bit.
Of course, even if this is a ceiling for Clinton, the ceiling is at a level where she wins decisively. If we actually see those states going blue, it may be time to start talking about a landslide after all. In the mean time though, if this was a normal campaign, the more realistic expectation would be to see things start drifting back toward Trump from here.
With how things are going though, who knows.
93.1 days until polls start to close on election day.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the tip jar.
States with new poll data since the last update: Georgia, Michigan
The string of bad news for Trump continues. This time out of Georgia:
Georgia has looked like a swing state ever since there were enough Clinton vs Trump polls to draw any real conclusions. It has consistently looked close. There was even a brief time in May where Clinton led in Georgia.*
With the latest results in Georgia, Clinton once again leads… but the polls in the average range from Clinton +4.0% to Trump +4.0%. The average itself is very close. Clinton only leads by 0.3%. The only real conclusion here right now is that Georgia could go either way. Which is remarkable, since this is Georgia. Georgia hasn’t gone blue since Bill Clinton won there in 1992.
Clinton’s very narrow lead here may well disappear with the very next poll, but for the moment, she is slightly ahead, so Georgia goes into her column.
If each candidate wins each of the states they are ahead in, Clinton now wins 357 to 181, a 176 electoral vote margin. This doesn’t yet match her high in May of a 188 electoral vote win in the expected case, but it is getting close.
With talk of a massive Trump loss once again dominating the chatter about the election, keep in mind that a 176 electoral vote margin still places Trump in the zone where he is doing worse than Romney (126 EV loss) but better than McCain (192 EV loss). Trump is losing, but it is the same sort of loss as the last couple of Republican candidates, not something of historic proportions. At least not at the moment.
Of course, there are 94.2 days until the polls close. That is plenty of time for things to change. A lot. It could get worse for Trump… or it could get better. It may well be that the latest drops are part of a Clinton convention bounce and not permanent damage for Trump. We’ll know better in a few weeks.
* This was not noted at the time because the poll that pushed Clinton over the edge wasn’t found and added until after the state had popped back to Trump.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks both a poll based estimate of the Electoral College and a numbers based look at the Delegate Races. All of the charts and graphs seen in this post are from that site. Additional graphs, charts and raw data can be found there. Follow @ElectionGraphs on Twitter or like Election Graphs on Facebook to see announcements of updates or to join the conversation. For those interested in individual general election poll updates, follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for all the polls as they are added. If you find the information in these posts interesting or useful, please consider visiting the tip jar.
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