This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Curmudgeon’s Corner: Can’t handle the fact

This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner, the show was recorded before the attack in Nice, Trump’s final VP pick, and the attempted coup in Turkey. So there will be nothing about those things! But Sam and Ivan do of course talk quite a bit about Election 2016 anyway. The other major topic is racial tensions in the wake of the Philandro Castile and Dallas shootings. The show is rounded out with shorter discussions of hard drive failures, summer camp, the UK prime minister… and Pokemon Go!

Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

CCCover20151125bw
Recorded 2016-07-14

Length this week – 2:00:48

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
View Podcast in iTunes
View Raw Podcast Feed
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Show Details:

  • (0:02:41-0:28:28) But First
    • Hard Drive Failure
    • Summer Camp
    • Job Flexibility
    • Pokemon Go
  • (0:29:49-1:07:58) Election 2016
    • Veepstakes
    • Rules Committee
    • RBG kerfuffle
    • Trump sues ex-staffer
    • Autoplay Videos / Multi-article stories
    • Republican Convention Agenda
    • Sanders endorses Clinton
    • Party Platforms
    • Swing Voters?
    • New UK Prime Minister
  • (1:08:37-2:00:27) Racial Tensions
    • Bush Dance and Speech
    • Philando Castile
    • Obama inflaming racial tensions?
    • Racial Differences in Police Cases
    • Dallas Attack
    • ALeXMXeLA.com
    • Bomb Robot
    • Dallas Motivations
    • Conservatives, protests, and police power

Note: Timestamps are accurate, but many audio players are not very precise on the timestamps they show, especially when scanning forwards and backwards, so depending on your player, if you scan to a specific time, you may not get exactly what is shown above and may have to scan back or forward a bit to get what is expected.

 

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music!

Electoral College: Florida back to Clinton again

States with new poll data since the last update: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Kansas, Missouri

Florida is close. Less than a week ago Trump took the lead for the first time since March.

With the latest polls, Clinton once again has a narrow lead.

chart-208

With close states, do not be surprised if they go back and forth across the line.

With a big state like Florida, this can cause big fluctuations in the electoral college picture:

chart-209

So we now have a big spike where Trump very very briefly led narrowly in both Florida and Pennsylvania. Then later polls almost immediately reversed those gains.

We are now back at Clinton 347 to Trump 191 in the “expected case” where everybody just wins all the states they are ahead in. This is a familiar place to be.

The Republican convention starts in 2.0 days. The Democratic convention in 9.1 days. It will probably take until at least a week after both conventions are over, maybe even two or three weeks, to fully know if there have been any enduring changes due to the conventions. So be patient.

Historically, conventions produce short term “bounces” that are fairly transient. They may even be too short to see on a state by state basis. But if any longer lasting changes happen, you’ll see them here.

115.3 days until 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.

Electoral College: Trump continues to tighten the race

States with new poll data since the last update: Iowa, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Florida

In advance of the conventions there has been a large volume of recent polling. For the first time with this update the polling average in some states is based fully on polls with their middates within the last seven days. Right now there is no shortage of state level polling and we are seeing lots of movement. Some of this may be random movement depending on which polls are most recent at any given time, but it is likely we are also detecting actual changes on the ground as well.

With the current batch of polls there are notable changes in four states. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa move toward Trump, while Colorado moves toward Clinton. Lets look at all four of these changes individually, then we’ll review the national picture.

Pennsylvania [20 EV]

chart-201

Polls for both Quinnipiac and Marist were added with this update. These were released and added on the same day. You can see above though that the Quinnipiac poll (which covers a slightly earlier date range) actually briefly spiked Pennsylvania into Weak Trump before the Marist poll pushed things back to the Clinton side.

Net result together though, Pennsylvania tightens, but Clinton is still ahead… by a narrow 2.0% margin.

With Pennsylvania in play again, Trump’s best case improves. In addition, this change contributed to moving the tipping point toward Trump.

Ohio [18 EV]

chart-202

With the newest polls Trump sees a bump as some polls very favorable to Clinton from mid-June roll off the average. Clinton now leads Ohio by only 0.8%. There is no change in categories here. Weak Clinton before, Weak Clinton after. But the movement in Ohio combines with the movement in Pennsylvania above to impact the tipping point.

Colorado [9 EV]

chart-203

After spending what seemed like forever as the least polled “close state”, we all of a sudden have lots and lots of polls in Colorado. The end result? Colorado had looked like a very close state based on the average results of the last few elections. But now that we finally have a decent volume of Clinton vs Trump polls, Clinton has a clear lead. She is now ahead by a healthy 7.0%.

So in the only one of today’s moves that is in Clinton’s direction, Colorado moves out of reach for Trump. At least for now. This reduces Trump’s best case.

Iowa [6 EV]

chart-204

New Gravis and Marist polls push Loras polls from the end of June off the average… polls which now look like clear outliers… and so the average moves in Trump’s direction. Iowa now looks very close, sitting at a 1.0% Clinton lead.

With Iowa close again, it is once again included as a possible Trump pick up, improving his best case.

National View

chart-205

Once you factor in the two states moving toward Trump and the one state moving forward Clinton, Trump’s best case moves from winning by 6 electoral votes to winning by 40 electoral votes. No net change for the expected case despite the temporary spike.

The more impressive change though is actually with the tipping point:

chart-206

With two states moving in ways that impact the tipping point, it moves from Clinton by 4.3% in Ohio to Clinton by 2.0% in Pennsylvania. This is the best position Trump has had in this metric since last August.

Trump is of course still behind. But a 2.0% tipping point means you only would need 1% of people flipping from Clinton to Trump to push Trump into the lead, or undecideds breaking in his direction. For the first time in a long time, this is looking like a close race again.

Screen Shot 2016-07-14 at 18.47.29595

Looking at the center of the spectrum, Trump’s shortest path to being in the lead goes through Ohio, Nevada, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. All of those states have Clinton in the lead, but by less than 2.0%, a margin that could easily evaporate overnight.

With the Republican convention starting in less than 4 days, if we see Trump get the traditional “bump” we may well see him actually in the lead for the first time this cycle sometime in the next couple weeks. This assumes of course the convention ends up coming off smoothly. If the convention becomes chaotic, the bump may evaporate.

Also acting against the bump, the Democratic convention starts only a few days after the Republican convention ends. There is no significant gap between the two conventions. Which may make any bump too transitory to measure in an electoral college based view.

If we see even a minor bump though, at this point it would be enough to put Trump in the lead.

To close up today, a quick look at the current map:

chart-207

117.2 days until polls start closing on Election night 2016. The conventions are upon us. Things will be nuts from here until November. Hold on tight! :-)

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.

Electoral College: In big move, Trump takes lead in Florida again

States updated with new poll data since last update: Nevada, Florida, Kentucky, New Hampshire

Just a couple weeks ago we were talking about how Clinton’s lead in Florida had gotten quite large, and it moved out of the possible pickups for Trump. This was on the strength of a number of polls that covered mid-June that were very positive toward Clinton, showing leads as high as 15% in the state. The worst mid-June poll for Clinton still showed her ahead by 6%. Those polls have now rolled off the average, replaced by new polls much more favorable to Trump. With the two new Florida polls added in this update, things move very rapidly in Trump’s direction:

chart-198

With the two new polls in the mix, the average moved from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton on June 28th. But things kept getting better for Trump. On July 10th the average moved from Weak Clinton to Weak Trump.* Trump takes the lead in Florida for the first time since March. At 29 electoral votes Florida makes a huge difference.

chart-199

You can now see an upward movement on Trump’s best case a couple weeks ago, followed by the bump upward in the expected case more recently.

The electoral college view can move very quickly, especially when a big state like Florida swings its weight around. So after a few weeks of bad news for Trump and the trend looking like it was heading relentlessly against him, we now have the chart showing movement back toward Trump.

Trump is still behind, but once again he has a “best case” that includes him winning. With Florida not just in play, but actually on his side for the moment, if Trump wins all the states he is ahead in, plus all the states where Clinton leads by less than 5%, he squeaks out a narrow 6 electoral vote win.

In the “expected case” were each candidate wins the states they are ahead in, Trump now only loses by 98 electoral votes. This is now better than Romney’s 126 electoral vote loss as well as McCain’s 192 electoral vote loss. So while Trump is still losing, with current polling he is actually improving on the performance of the last two Republican candidates.

With Florida moving, the “tipping point” also moves:

chart-200

Before this update the tipping point was a 5.7% Clinton lead in Florida. Now it is a 4.3% Clinton lead in Ohio.

One thing to point out in both of the graphs above is that we see a lot of volatility in the “Trump best case” and “tipping point” lines in the last couple of months. This is the natural result of general election polling ramping up once the nominations were settled. States that are near the tipping point or near category boundaries will “twinkle” as new polls cause the averages to bounce around. This will only increase as we get closer and closer to November. Although I post updates each time states move around in this way, it is important to watch the longer term trends, while remembering that things can sometimes shift quickly.

For now though, the current summary looks like this:

Screen Shot 2016-07-12 at 17.08.17955

It is hard to overstate the importance of Florida here. With Florida out of reach, Trump’s best case was to lose. With Florida on his side, a win is once again in reach, although he still needs to flip every single one of Nevada, New Hampshire, Colorado, North Carolina, and Ohio to do it.

119.7 days until polls close on election day. Less than 6 days until the gavel drops on the Republican convention.

* For those wondering why in this single update we start referencing changes that happened in the average on June 28th and July 10th rather than a change that happens as of this update, this is because the graphs reflect changes due to polls at the mid-dates of the time they were in the field, not at the time the poll is announced, or the time I enter the poll into my data. So today two polls were added, the first covered June 26 to 28 and the second covered July 9 to 10. These became the most recent and 4th most recent polls I know about in Florida, and the line showing the average adjusts to reflect changes at the midpoint of those date ranges.

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.

Electoral College: Colorado into the Blue

Polls added since last update: Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Wisconsin, Oregon, Vermont, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Maine (All), Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah.

In addition to a number of actual new polls, I recently got a helpful batch of data from Darryl, another election modeler who posts at horsesass.org. His latest update is here. His analysis uses state polling averages, but then runs a Monte Carlo simulation to generate a distribution of possible outcomes and win odds, rather than simply the electoral result range based on the close states going one way or another like I do here. Good stuff, you should check it out.

In any case, Darryl sent me a batch of polls he had in his database that I had apparently missed. Most of these were older polls and though they jiggled the lines in the past a bit, did not change the current analysis. Except in one state: Colorado.

chart-196

 

Colorado has been very lightly polled given how it is one of the states that has actually gone both ways in the last five elections. The poll Darryl had found which I had missed was a Keating poll back in February, that showed Clinton with a significant lead. With only three Clinton vs Trump polls total so far, and old elections filling out the polling average, that one poll makes a difference.

With that poll now in place, the average moves from “Weak Trump” to “Weak Clinton”. In fact, since it was an older poll that was responsible for the change, Colorado has actually been “Weak Clinton” for months now, we just didn’t know it. This change is now reflected in all the graphs.

chart-197

 

Everything on the center “expected result” line since late February moves down 18 as Colorado’s 9 electoral votes flip from red to blue. Colorado still looks close though. Clinton’s lead is only 2.9% and the three polls we do have range from Clinton up 10%, to Trump up 11%. We still don’t have a really great picture of Colorado. More polls are needed there.

In the mean time, the new national summary looks like this:
Screen Shot 2016-07-11 at 16.44.03927

We still have a picture of Clinton dominating Trump. Even if Trump wins all the close states, he still loses. In the expected case, Trump’s result is still better than McCain but worse than Romney. A loss to be sure, but a loss comparable to the Republican losses in the last two elections, not an unusually bad loss.

We are now only a week away from the Republican convention. There is usually a bit of a bounce after a convention (although it usually doesn’t last too long). But this year is unusual. Who knows what we will see.

120.3 days until polls start to close on Election 2016.

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.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Shards of Glass

On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan spend the most time on Election 2016. So you will hear all about the latest Trump craziness and the Clinton email scandal. But there is a lot more here too! We recorded before Philandro Castile’s death or the attacks in Dallas, so that will have to wait until next week, but Sam has an adventure with the IRS and we talk about our theme music by Ray Lynch! And in a lightning round we briefly cover over a dozen other topics from the space probe at Jupiter to Puerto Rican bankruptcy to how Sam rigs the election polls… and more!

Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

CCCover20151125bw
Recorded 2016-07-07

Length this week – 2:01:41

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
View Podcast in iTunes
View Raw Podcast Feed
Download MP3 File
Follow the podcast on Facebook

Show Details:

  • (0:01:58-0:20:23) But First
    • Agenda
    • Sam and the IRS
    • Ivan Family
    • Ray Lynch
  • (0:21:03-1:02:56) Election 2016: Republicans
    • Star of David Tweet
    • Trump likes Saddam Hussein
    • Trump throwing the election?
    • Trump rape charges
    • Free the delegates?
  • (1:04:12-1:27:12) Election 2016: Democrats
    • Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch
    • Clinton Email Scandal
    • Sanders Foot Dragging
    • Veepstakes
  • (1:27:53-2:01:21) Lightning Round
    • Juno at Jupiter
    • Brexit Fallout
    • Tesla Crashes
    • Non-Western Terror Attacks
    • EgyptAir Update
    • Puerto Rican Bankrupcy
    • Chilcot Report
    • Alton Sterling
    • Christian Mingle
    • ALeXMXeLA.com
    • Gretchen Carslon lawsuit
    • Book: Earth Afire
    • Trump and the Frozen book
    • Rigging the Polls for Clinton

Note: Timestamps are accurate, but many audio players are not very precise on the timestamps they show, especially when scanning forwards and backwards, so depending on your player, if you scan to a specific time, you may not get exactly what is shown above and may have to scan back or forward a bit to get what is expected.

 

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music!

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Live with the Strings

This week on Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan’s big topics are Brexit and Election 2016. In addition though, they talk about Low Battery Mode, the Yelchin accident, SCOTUS, and even a bit about Ivan’s latest Uber driver and a connection to a class Sam and Ivan took in college.

Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!

CCCover20151125bw
Recorded 2016-06-29

Length this week – 2:01:53

1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
View Podcast in iTunes
View Raw Podcast Feed
Download MP3 File
Follow the podcast on Facebook

Show Details:

  • (0:00:10-0:13:20) But First
  • (0:13:59-0:27:26) Yelchin accident
  • (0:28:29-0:58:17) Brexit
  • (0:59:20-1:47:04) Election 2016
  • (1:48:22-2:01:33) SCOTUS

Note: Timestamps are accurate, but many audio players are not very precise on the timestamps they show, especially when scanning forwards and backwards, so depending on your player, if you scan to a specific time, you may not get exactly what is shown above and may have to scan back or forward a bit to get what is expected.

Electoral College: Clinton now strong in Iowa

New polls since last update: Iowa, Florida, New York, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan.

This is now the sixth day in a row that there has been movement in the Election Graphs models. I didn’t expect this kind of pace until September or October. Hopefully it won’t be this way the entire time until November, or your faithful commentator will be a burned out cinder by then.

In any case, in today’s update two changes contribute to the changes:

Iowa [6 EV]

chart-192

The new Iowa polls by Loras (one with Johnson and Stein, one without) initially look like outliers. But there has been a wave of these polls showing bigger Clinton leads than we had seen previously this week. Are they all outliers? There will be no way to tell for sure until there is more polling. But do not be surprised if this “movement” reverses once these particular polls roll off of the average.

In the mean time though, we include all the polls in the average, and Iowa moves from Weak Clinton to Strong Clinton, which means it is no longer included in Trump’s best case.

chart-193

With Iowa not in play, Trump’s best case moves from losing by 40 electoral votes to losing by 52 electoral votes. This is still better than the picture was at the beginning of May, which Trump’s best case was to lose by 78 electoral votes, but even so, this isn’t a pretty picture for Trump.

After weeks of saying here that a Trump collapse was not yet visible in the state polls, you can now clearly see a Trump bump, followed by a collapse. Notable though is the fact that this is only visible in Trump’s “best case”, not the “expected case”. Trump made a number of states look close, but aside from some transitory short term changes that were erased as more polls were added, Trump has not moved any states over to his side of the line.

The expected electoral college result has been static at Clinton 338, Trump 200 since March.

Florida [29 EV]

chart-194

Florida does not change categories this time, but along with Iowa moves the tipping point.

Iowa moved toward Clinton. The Iowa poll covered a slightly earlier timeframe than the Florida poll. Iowa moved the tipping point from Clinton by 5.5% in Minnesota to Clinton by 6.5% in New Mexico.

But then Florida moved a bit toward Trump and almost immediately moved the tipping point back to Clinton by 5.7% in Florida.

chart-195

You can see the spike down to 6.5% then immediate movement back to 5.7% on the chart. Net change is still a 0.2% movement toward Clinton.

The Trump bump followed by a collapse is now clearly visible on the tipping point chart as well. Note that the “bump” only moved Trump to the zone he was in back in March. It never completely reversed the negative trend of the primary months. And this entire graph is on the blue side of the center line. Trump has never had a lead.

On this metric, with the recent collapse just hit his worst level ever (then bounced back a bit).

The way to read this trend along with the flatness in the expected electoral college result is that while Trump hasn’t fallen further behind in the electoral college, the states he would need to flip in order to win are moving further away from him, making the task of catching up with Clinton look harder and harder.

The picture has changed dramatically in just the last two to three weeks though, so it is important to keep in mind how volatile these numbers can be. Especially since a number of the polls that caused these changes initially look like they might be outliers.

It would not be surprising at all to see some movement back in the trump direction in the two weeks prior to the Republican convention. And of course the “usual” pattern is a bump after the Convention.

So keep watching. 130.3 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.

Electoral College: Trump close in New Hampshire again

New polls since last update: North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Washington

After yesterday’s mass of bad polls for Trump, today’s update brings a positive change for Trump in New Hampshire:

chart (124)

To be honest, this looks less like real moment, than the April poll by WMUR showing Clinton ahead by 19% being a fairly clear outlier and now rolling off the polling average. With that poll gone, the average moves to a 3.2% Clinton lead.

Without the outlier poll New Hampshire would have still been in the “Strong Clinton” category earlier this year. The presence of the outlier delayed the move to “Weak Clinton”, but New Hampshire is there now. There has yet to be a poll showing Trump actually ahead in New Hampshire, but there are plenty showing that it is close. So it is now considered as a possible Trump pick up, which improves Trump’s “best case”.

chart (125)

See the little bump at the top of the very right hand side of the “bubble”? That’s new Hampshire. Trump’s best case improves from losing by 48 electoral votes to only losing by 40 electoral votes.

New Hampshire aside, for the moment Trump remains pretty far behind. He has said that the “real campaign” won’t begin until after the convention. We’ll see soon enough.

17.9 days until the Republican Convention, 24.9 days until the Democratic Convention, 131.2 days until polls start to close on Election Day 2016.

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.

Electoral College: Clinton surges, Trump best case again to lose

New polls since last update: Florida, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia.

This is the fourth day in a row where there have been changes to the Election Graphs model based on new polling. That is quite a bit! The pace of polling is accelerating as we approach the conventions.

The new additions today that caused changes were all from a series of swing state polls released by Ballotpedia. The Ballotpedia results look very bad for Trump. In terms of the Election Graph model, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia all jumped into categories more favorable to Clinton, and the movements in Ohio and Pennsylvania contributed to a move in the tipping point toward Clinton.

All in all, the net result is that once again even if Trump were to win all the states he is ahead in, plus all the states where he is less than 5% behind, he would still lose. As recently as yesterday I said that Trump was up or flat from one and two months ago on all four metrics tracked here. Today’s results flip that overnight. Trump is now DOWN or flat on all four metrics when compared to either one or two months ago. Perhaps these polls will turn out to be outliers, but for the moment, Trump’s position looks much weaker than it did… and it was pretty weak to start with.

Lets go over each of states that shifted the model. Although just released, these polls covered June 10 to June 22, so the changes show up on the charts on the midpoint, June 16th. So the shape of the charts over the last couple weeks is modified, not just the very end of the charts.

Pennsylvania

chart-186

A series of relatively good polls for Trump that showed Pennsylvania close had resulted in a nice spike toward Trump. But with the new polls from Ballotpedia (one including Johnson, one with just Clinton and Trump, both showing a 14% Clinton lead) the average again moves dramatically toward Clinton, now showing a 7.2% Clinton lead.

Now, it is clear that the new polls are dramatically different than the other recent polls, so the possibility that they are not really representative can’t be thrown out. On the other hand, they are still within the very wide range we have seen polls over the past few months. Election Graphs includes all polls in the average and lets the average wash it out. If Ballotpedia is not representative of the “real” trend, new polls should show that before very long.

For the moment though, Pennsylvania moves to “Strong Clinton” and is no longer included in Trump’s best case.

North Carolina

chart-187

In North Carolina the two Ballotpedia polls (Clinton leading by 7% and 10%) not only pull North Carolina from Weak Trump to Weak Clinton, but because these polls covered a time period before the recent upward movement by Trump it actually completely erases that brief period in the red zone for North Carolina. Clinton now leads by 3.4% and North Carolina is back on the blue side of the ledger.

Virginia

chart-188

Virginia is also a state where Trump had made the state close, but the new polls wipe that out. Here the new Ballotpedia polls show Clinton ahead by 7% and 8%, and the new average is Clinton by 5.2%. This takes Virginia back out of Trump’s list of potential pickups and further damages his “best case”.

Ohio

chart-189

The new Ballotpedia polls (Clinton by 7% and 9%) actually briefly moved Ohio into the “Strong Clinton” category, but since there was already a later PPP poll (Clinton by 4%) there is no net category change in today’s update. The movement in Ohio, along with the movement in Pennsylvania, both contributed to the change in the tipping point though.

National Picture

So where do all these changes put the national picture?

chart-190

The most recent move on this chart is actually an upward movement toward Trump. This is Ohio moving back to “Weak Clinton” after the brief period as “Strong Clinton” described in the Ohio section. But the major move in todays updates is overall movement away from Trump.

Trump’s “expected case” moved from a 108 electoral vote loss (which is now wiped from the chart) to a 138 electoral vote loss, which is where the expected case has now been all but a few days since March.

Meanwhile Trump’s “best case” moved from an 18 electoral vote win, to a 48 electoral vote loss.

And the tipping point also moves:

chart-191

The tipping point moved from a 4.0% Clinton lead in Ohio, to a 5.5% Clinton lead in Minnesota.

The center of the spectrum of the states now looks like this:

Screen Shot 2016-06-29 at 23.05.57205

To be clear: Ohio, Nevada, Iowa and North Carolina currently look like “close states” that Trump could possibly pick up. Clinton doesn’t need any of them. She could give all four of them to Trump on a silver platter and he would still lose. She could throw in Virginia as well, and even give him the 2nd district of Maine… and she would still win.

Now, if these Ballotpedia results turn out to just be bad polling, the averages will pop back a bit more toward Trump once we get a few more polls in these states. But for the moment, Trump’s averages just took a serious dive. He isn’t in the worst shape against Clinton ever… that happened at the beginning of May… but he is close.

132.0 days until the polls start to close. Much more fun to come…

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.