This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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States with new poll data added since the last update: All 50 states and DC.
Notable changes in: Ohio, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and the tipping point
National Summary
Despite the widespread view that the time between the Vice Presidential debate and the present has essentially been non-stop bad news for Trump that could only cause his number to fall, and the fact that the national popular vote numbers do show this kind of trend, the electoral college view has just plain not shown that. In fact, looking at the various electoral college numbers we track here, things have mostly been moving in Trump’s direction since the 2nd debate. In the latest update, we have these changes:
Good for Trump:
- Expected case moves from a 154 EV win for Clinton to a 140 EV win for Clinton
- Tipping point moves from Clinton by 5.4% in VA to Clinton by 4.9% in PA
- Trump best case improves from a 6 EV loss to a 34 EV win
Good for Clinton:
- Clinton best case improves from a 204 EV win to a 238 EV win
While Clinton’s best case does improve a bit (although this may be due to outliers, see state details below), for the most part the movement here is toward Trump. It is not a huge movement, but it also doesn’t look like Trump continuing to crash.
Here are the charts:
While we do have Indiana and Kansas moving into the “Weak Trump” category, and thus expanding Clinton’s best case, the net changes for the expected case and tipping point are both in Trump’s direction, and Trump improves his best case as well, with Clinton’s lead in Pennsylvania down from where it was at the VP debate.
Looking at both charts, while Trump may have improved a bit from his lows, what this really looks like is that we have reached a plateau and things have basically been flat since the VP debate, minus some jiggles around the edges by states that are right near my category boundaries.
There are still events that aren’t factored in here, including some of the later sexual assault allegations, and of course the third debate. So things may start moving again in the next few updates. But for now… basically flat.
The “best case”, if Trump wins all his states, plus all the states where he is within 5%, now once again registers a narrow Trump win. But that would still require either a fairly large systematic polling error, or a last minute Trump surge. The “bubble” shows the extreme range of “conceivable possibilities”, but the edges of the bubble are still very unlikely. We’re far more likely to get results closer to the “expected” line.
Looking at the expected result, we are once again we are in the zone where Trump does better than McCain, but worse than Romney. That is a solid Clinton win, but not any sort of unprecedented loss for Trump. Just a normal sort of electoral loss. At least in terms of the electoral college.
We’ll see if anything causes that to change.
19.3 days left until we start getting real vote counts instead of polls…
State Details
Weak Clinton to Weak Trump
Trump now leads Ohio by 0.9%, but Ohio has been bouncing up and down right around the center line for months. It had been trending toward Clinton until a recent batch of polls that were better for Trump. Really could go either way.
Weak Trump to Weak Clinton
Clinton is now at +1.6% in Arizona. The state has been trending in her direction since the 1st debate. It is still close though, and this could be reversed. There is a reason we call the “weak” states weak.
Into reach for Trump
Clinton’s lead in Pennsylvania grew considerably after the 1st debate, but has been shrinking again since the VP debate. It now stands at only 4.9%, which means we once again consider it within reach for Trump. If Trump managed to stretch out and win Pennsylvania, his overall shot of winning the White House is significantly greater. But he has never led in the Pennsylvania poll average. So that will still take a significant move from where we are now…
Into reach for Clinton
The Election Graphs average now has Trump’s lead in Indiana down to only 4.0%. This puts it in the “Weak Trump” category. I’m not sure I really believe this though. This is pulled downward by two Google polls showing Clinton actually leading in Indiana, which are outliers compared to the rest of the Indiana results. Without Google, the average would be Trump leading by 8.0%. Indiana is closer than it was a few months ago. It HAS been trending slowly away from Trump. But take Indiana as a swing state with a dose of salt until non-Google polls show it there too.
Use the rest of your salt for Kansas, and for the same reason. Google. Without the Google polls, the average in Kansas would not be Trump by 2.7%, it would be Trump by 15.0%. Kansas is lightly polled, so Google has an outsized influence. And the Google results are WAY off from what any other pollster has seen.
Also impacted the tipping point
A note about McMullin
In the last week or two McMullin has spiked in Utah. Some individual polls now even show him leading in Utah. All of the current Election Graphs metrics and charts operate under the assumption that no third party has a realistic shot at winning electoral votes. I have had the outline of a contingency plan on how to modify the site to accommodate 3rd parties that might win electoral votes for months, but activating it would take quite a lot of time and effort. If a 3rd candidate had gotten to that position a month or two ago, the site would definitely have been revamped to adjust for that possibility. As it is, there realistically is no longer time to do that before election day.
Right now the Real Clear Politics average in Utah has McMullin 6.4% behind the lead. The 538 average in Utah has him 11.1% behind the lead. If/when McMullin is within 5% according to either of these averages, I will add notes to both the Utah and National pages talking about the possibility of McMullin winning Utah’s 6 electoral votes, but I probably won’t try to revamp the site to change absolutely everything to account for the possibility. I’ll try to have something ready for 2020 just in case though. :-)
For more information…
This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. Election Graphs tracks a state poll based estimate of the Electoral College. 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 added since the last update: All of them. Multiple times. There are additional new polls since I had to cut things off for this update as well. Those will be in the next update.
National Summary
The last week of polls has been devastating to Trump’s position. In the last update we were just starting to see the reaction from the first debate. With this batch the post-debate polling continued to roll in, and while there were a couple of minor moves toward Trump, the net change in this update was a dramatic move toward Clinton:
- The expected result moved from Clinton by 6 electoral votes to Clinton by 154 electoral votes
- The tipping point moved from Clinton by 2.1% in CO to Clinton by 4.5% in MI
- Trump’s best case moved from a 60 EV win to a 26 EV win
- Clinton’s best case moved from a 208 EV win to a 196 EV win
Looking at the charts:
The previous update mentioned some Trump losses starting a week or two before the debate. With a lot more polls filling in the time period right before the debate as well as right after, it now looks like those losses were reversed before the debate.
In the time after the debate though, all three indicators on the chart have moved in Clinton’s direction. The race is now essentially back to where it was at the beginning of September. We’re not yet back at Clinton’s high point from August, but it is getting close.
The tipping point chart is even more stark. As with the electoral college view, it looks like Trump’s mid-September declines were reversed by debate time, but after the debate everything falls off a cliff. Most of Trump’s gains from August and September are gone. Right before the debate he topped out with Clinton only ahead in the tipping point metric by 0.4%.
Clinton now leads by 4.5%. The tipping point state is Michigan. Clinton only has to increase her lead slightly there to not just take Michigan out of reach for Trump, but the Presidency.
What we are seeing in the polling results right now at this point probably fully factors in the debate itself. But we are just starting to see the impact from Trump’s “worst week in presidential campaign history ” that started with the debate, continued with his attacks on Alicia Machado, and ended with the leak of some of his tax information. The events of that week are not yet fully baked in.
And of course, the polls do not yet reflect the VP debate, or more importantly, the 2005 Trump video that was leaked on Friday. It is hard to imagine the events of the last few days NOT having an impact on the polls.
And the next debate is coming up. It should be interesting. If you were not planning on tuning in before, change your plans.
31.7 days left until the first actual election results start coming in.
State Details
A lot of states moved in order to produce the summary results above. For those interested in looking at the state by state details, they are below:
Weak Trump to Weak Clinton
Moving out of reach for Trump
Moving out of reach for Clinton
Moving into reach for Trump
States that changed categories but then moved right back again
For more information…
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 added since the last update: All 50 states, and DC. Notable changes in the tipping point plus New Mexico, Maine (at large), Kansas, and Missouri.
National Summary
With the latest batch of updates, there was a lot of churn that caused some big movements if you look at the charts. For a while as I entered polls it looked like Trump’s peak was definite and a clear downward trend was in place, even before the debate. But then as I continued to enter polls, most of those Clinton gains were reversed.
The primary reason for this? Florida [29 EV], Ohio [18 EV], and North Carolina [15 EV] are all currently very close in my averages. Close enough that single polls can move them back and forth across the center line. As I worked through this round of poll updates, all three of these states moved from Weak Trump to Weak Clinton and back again. Now, the actual changes in the averages in these three states were not much. They just happened to pass the zero line, and have large numbers of electoral votes.
So if you look at the “Expected Case” chart for the electoral college, you see a big move toward Clinton, then a big reversal a few days later. Because of the nature of the electoral college, you should expect (and be careful interpreting) large electoral college moves like this so long as there are big states that are close. In these cases looking at the tipping point provides a different view with a bit less volatility.
In any case, looking only at the final net change from this round of polls, we see these changes in the national picture:
- The expected case moves from Clinton by 8 EV to Clinton by 6 EV
- Clinton’s best case improves from Clinton by 188 EV to Clinton by 208 EV
- Trump’s best case declines from Trump by 106 EV to Trump by 92 EV
- The tipping point moves from Clinton by 0.1% in KS to Clinton by 1.3% in NH
Now, this round includes a handful of post-debate polls, but almost all of the movement discussed here comes from before the debate. (The exception is Florida returning to Weak Trump after the debate.)
Looking at the charts…
Notice the clear dip from about September 19th to September 28th when Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina went slightly blue, then moved slightly red again. In the end, the “expected case” remained flat. The movement Clinton saw from winning by 6 electoral votes to 8 electoral votes in the last update was erased by New Mexico and Kansas both returning to their “normal” colors.
Both “best cases” moved toward Clinton though, with New Mexico and Maine at large both moving out of Trump’s reach, while Missouri moved into Clinton’s reach.
The tipping point chart doesn’t end up with huge moves when big states cross the center line, so it might be a better chart to look at right now to see how the race is moving. What we see is that after big gains starting with Trump’s campaign shakeup on August 17th, Trump seems to have peaked around September 7th… way up from where he had been, but never actually taking the lead… and he has been on a slow decline ever since… but we haven’t yet seen a BIG move back toward Clinton.
By most reports, Trump did badly in the debate, and has been doing things counter-productive to his campaign since the debate. But this does not mean large numbers of people have changed sides. Maybe this will happen, maybe it won’t, but the small number of post-debate polls already included here don’t yet show it. (In fact, as I mentioned, the single state category change post-debate so far is a move toward Trump.)
Additional post-debate polls are coming in quickly now, but I had to cut off the round poll updates somewhere to get this blog post out. There will be another update soon enough, and we’ll start to see a bit better what (if any) lasting change comes out of the first debate. Of course just about as soon as there has been enough time to see that in the polls, it will be time for the next debates…
39.4 days left until polls start to close.
State Details
For those digging into the details, here are the charts for all the states influencing the analysis above:
The big close states:
Weak Clinton to Weak Trump
Strong Trump numbers from Ipsos and CVoter balance out the strong Clinton numbers from Google and leave us with an essentially tied Kansas and erase the short blue period for the state I noted last time. (The Ipsos and CVoter results came out later, but covered an earlier time period, so they moved the lines in the past, not just the current number.)
As I stated last time I am incredulous about the Google numbers, and wish there was more additional polling in Kansas to clear up what is really going on there.
Weak Trump to Strong Clinton
New polls in New Mexico erased the short foray into red territory for New Mexico. As with Kansas, since some of the “new” polls covered older date ranges, the shape of the curve in the past changed as well as the current number.
Strong Trump to Weak Trump
Weak Clinton to Strong Clinton
Other states that influenced the Tipping Point
Note on placing polls on the timeline
I somehow forgot to mention this in my recent interview about this site, but it seems relevant to the discussion above… Many other election tracking sites place polls based on the END of the poll’s time in the field. I place polls on the timeline based on the mid-date of their time in the field. I think this does a better job at trying to identify when directional changes happen, because if an event and a mid-date are aligned, you know that the poll was half before and half after the event. When you place polls by the end of their field time, you can’t make any sort of statements like that about how the poll results match up with the event without referring to the specific start and end dates.
For more information…
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.
Edit 2016-10-01 00:34 UTC to correct the one state that moved after the debates. I had said it was North Carolina moving back from Weak Clinton to Weak Trump, it was actually Florida.
States with new poll data added since the last update: All 50 states and DC. Multiple times each. Notable changes in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Colorado, Wisconsin, Maine (All), and Georgia.
There have been tons of polls, including “50 state” polls from three different sources, one of which had weekly data going back four weeks that needed to be added. There were many shifts caused by this batch of polls. We’ll look at all the charts, but lets start with the headline:
The Romney Barrier
The averages in Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina all moved from Clinton to Trump. Iowa did move in the opposite direction, but it is much smaller, so the net change was dramatically toward Trump.
Before this batch of changes, the “expected” result if everybody won the states they lead was Clinton 341 to Trump 197… a 144 electoral vote win for Clinton.
With this batch of polls, the expected result is now Clinton 285 to Trump 253. This is still a Clinton win, but now by only 32 electoral votes.
From February onward this race had been stuck in the zone with Trump losing by margins between McCain’s loss (192 electoral votes) and Romney’s loss (126 electoral votes).
For the first time since February, Trump is now looking like he would do better than Romney did. Trump now matches Romney’s map, but adds Florida and Ohio. It isn’t quite enough to win, but Trump is now closer than he has ever been… and doing better than the last two Republican candidates.
Some folks were looking at Clinton’s lead in mid-August and were trumpeting the possibility of a Clinton landslide in early August. It was just looking like a solid win for Clinton back then, not a landslide, but things have actually moved in the opposite direction. A 32 electoral college win is more like a squeaker. It would only take Michigan flipping to get us to a 269 to 269 electoral college tie.
(There were also changes in the “best cases” from a lot of states moving in both directions. Trump’s best case went from winning by 68 electoral votes to winning by 66 electoral votes. Clinton’s best case went from winning by 210 electoral votes to winning by 190. So the overall range of possible outcomes reduced.)
Tipping Point
Now, despite the expected case moving in Trump’s direction, changes in Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had the net effect of… zero. Well, to be precise the tipping point changed from a 3.4% Clinton lead in Florida to a 3.4% Clinton lead in Michigan. So the state that holds the balance shifted, but the actual percentage did not.
Looking at the trends though, rather than just the change in this update, while the expected case has clearly been moving in Trumps direction the last few weeks, the tipping point has been trending toward Clinton.
What does this mean?
At a basic level it means that while Trump has made the race closer, pulling over the next few states he needs to win is getting harder.
3.4% is still close, but if Trump is at or near his ceiling, it may be a tough last 3.4% to move.
To be absolutely clear, with all of the above Clinton is still a strong favorite. Trump has made it a lot closer than it was, but he still has a lot of work to do to pull the remaining states he would need past the line to secure an electoral college victory. It isn’t impossible. It is just very hard.
Individual States
OK, with the two national summaries out of the way, time for a run down of all the states that shifted in ways that caused changes to the expected or best cases. I’ll just do a run down of all the graphs without commentary on each one. For the most part they speak for themselves. Keep an eye out for the polls that look like outliers. In some cases if new polls don’t back those up, the changes described here may reverse themselves quickly as new polls come in.
States moving from Clinton to Trump:
States moving from Trump to Clinton:
States now in play for Trump:
States now in play for Clinton:
States no longer in play for Trump:
States no longer in play for Clinton:
What’s Next
This batch of polls was huge, so in the time it took me to complete it, there have already been a bunch of new polls which I will be adding as soon as I can. Even if those polls don’t change anything, there will be polls soon enough that do. This is a dynamic race, and as I post this we have 54.7 days left until we start getting the actual results. Hang on tight, we’re in for a nice ride before we are done.
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.
[Update 07:16 UTC to add comment about outliers.]
[Updated 07:27 UTC to fix some awkward wording.]
States with new poll data added since the last update: Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Illinois, North Carolina, Indiana, Georgia, Missouri, Arizona, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Tennessee, New Jersey, Minnesota, Washington, Michigan, South Carolina, Maine (All), Louisiana, Utah, Oklahoma, Alabama, Nebraska (All), Oregon, Kansas, Maryland, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Connecticut, Arkansas, West Virginia, Colorado, Idaho, New Hampshire, Alaska
We have the weekly batch of polls from Ipsos, plus a handful of other scattered polls. One state changes category:
After having been “Weak Clinton” through July, for the last month the average in Iowa has been hovering right around the center line. It had become “Weak Trump” for a short time in the second week of August, but then quickly moved back to Clinton. With the latest couple of polls showing Trump leading, the average moves once again to the Trump side of the line.
This is a narrow lead… 0.5%… it could move back to the other side of the line with the next poll. But for now, Trump leads in Iowa, and so this changes the expected results line:
This brings the expected case to a 144 electoral vote win for Clinton. This matches the best Trump has done since April. In terms of the expected case, the metric that actually matters the most, this has seemed like Trump’s ceiling ever since he locked up the nomination. He has been able to move his best case, but in terms of moving blue states over to his side of the line, he just hasn’t been able to push past this level.
With average changes in Ohio and Florida, the tipping point also moved:
Prior to the current batch of polls, the tipping point was Clinton +3.8% in Ohio. The new polls exposed a brief spike to Clinton only leading by 2.4% in Michigan, but then falling back to Clinton +3.0% in Florida. The net change in this update is still a 0.8% movement toward Trump though.
As with the expected electoral college result, Trump is near the top of his recent range. A 3.0% Clinton tipping point means that only a small uniform shift across all states would push Trump into the lead. The race is actually relatively close here. So why is most of the talk still about how Clinton is clearly winning?
Well, first of all, because she is. Trump has never led in either the electoral college expected case or the tipping point. She is just objectively in the lead and always has been.
Second, we have seen the whole race wiggle around in a zone. Things move up and down within that zone, but seem to have trouble escaping it. On the one side Clinton can’t seem to break out to move things from just a regular comfortable win to doing better than Obama did against McCain, and on the other side, Trump can make the race tighter, but hasn’t been able to break the barrier of matching or improving on Romney’s performance.
Since April, it has looked like Trump would do better than McCain (192 EV loss), but not as well as Romney (126 EV loss). It just seems like that is where this race wants to be, at least in terms of the electoral college. Of course, both of those men lost. This range does not include winning.
So for Trump to win, things need to change and move into a zone they have not been in before. And he is running out of time. The next opportunity will likely be the debates. The first one is in 22 days. Then we have 65.3 days until results start rolling in.
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 added since the last update: Wisconsin, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, West Virginia, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, Kansas
With the logic change out of the way, the race moves on. With the latest batch of polls, one state changes category, and two more contribute to a change in the tipping point.
Electoral College Trend
Despite a few bad polls for Trump right after the convention, the general trend in Michigan has been a tightening race since the beginning of July. With the latest, Clinton’s lead falls to only 4.4%. For the first time since March, Michigan is looking possible for Trump, so we now include it in his best case.
If Trump wins all the states he is ahead in, plus all the states where Clinton leads by less than 5%, he now wins by 56 electoral votes.
(Note the transient spike on the chart as well. This was caused by one poll added in this batch briefly bringing Pennsylvania back into reach for Trump, but another poll added in this same batch increased Clinton’s lead again right away, so there was no net change due to Pennsylvania this time.)
Tipping Point
Ohio and New Hampshire were and still are “Weak Clinton” states, but they wiggled around a bit with the latest polls and moved the tipping point from Clinton by 4.4% in Ohio to Clinton by 3.8% in Ohio, an 0.6% move toward Trump.
Overall
In both the Trump best case and the tipping point, we see Trump clearly reaching a peak during the conventions, then plummeting the first half of August, then recovering ever since. He isn’t quite back to where he was before the conventions, but he is getting close.
So far Trump is making a lot of states that were not close a few weeks ago close. But no states have crossed the center line in the last couple of weeks. We have seen this before. There are a variety of blue states where Trump seems to be able to come close, but he is having a hard time pulling them across the line into the red zone.
Since the conventions the “expected” case has been in the range between Clinton winning by 144 and Clinton winning by 188. Trump hasn’t done better than losing by 144 electoral votes since before he was locked up the Republican nomination. The test for any continued Trump rebound will be if he can start to move not just his best case, but the expected case as well. Can he actually flip states? Or just make them close?
The electoral college margin in the expected case is deceptive, because these numbers can change very quickly. The tipping point is the thing to watch at the moment. At a 3.8% Clinton margin, less than 1 out of 50 people have to change their minds to flip the outcome. The public is polarized, but 1 out of 50 isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things. You can imagine events that would flip that many people if Clinton has a bad week.
Historically though, Trump is very near his previous ceilings. Every other time he has reached these levels, he has fallen back down fairly quickly. Will this time be different?
67.2 days 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: Georgia, Ohio, Nevada, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Kansas.
The quick answer to the question in the subject of this post is “not yet”, at least in terms of what can be detected in state poll averages like we track here. Plenty has been written elsewhere on the Trump bump in national polling averages such as Pollster and RCP. There does appear to be a bump after the Republican convention. It takes a lot longer for these effects to show up at the state level, so we are unlikely to see individual effects for the two conventions. Instead we’ll see the net effect after both.
In the meantime, there are indeed two changes from the latest batch of polls, and they both are in Trump’s direction. In one case the data is from before the convention, and in the other the movement is small, so it isn’t enough to call out as a bump yet. Looking at them individually:
Michigan
Even though one poll was just added, the most recent poll in Michigan is still from before the Republican convention, so we can’t read anything about a bump into it. But it did cause some polls that were very favorable to Clinton to roll off the poll average, so the average spikes up in Trump’s direction.
There haven’t been any polls actually showing Trump ahead in Michigan in almost a year, but with this Clinton’s lead drops to 4.8%, so we consider it a potential pickup for Trump.
Trump’s best case moves from winning by 40 electoral votes to winning by 72 electoral votes. To get there he still has to flip Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan. Clinton is still ahead in all of those states, but by less than 5%. The “expected” result where everybody wins the states they are ahead in is still a 156 electoral vote victory for Clinton.
But Trump doesn’t need to flip ALL of those states to win, only some of them. How close is he really? That is where Ohio and the tipping point come in…
Ohio
New results from PPP, which ARE from after the Republican convention move the average from a 2.2% Clinton lead in Ohio to a 1.0% lead. Either way, the state is “Weak Clinton”, but because Ohio was the tipping point, this impacts the tipping point:
The tipping point moves from Clinton by 2.2% in Ohio to Clinton by 2.0% in Pennsylvania… so back to where it was right before the Republican National Convention started.
National View
Looking at the center part of spectrum of states… only those where the margin is under 10%, we now have this:
And the map:
That is a lot of close or almost close states.
105.2 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.
States with new poll data since the last update: Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, Connecticut, Illinois, Idaho, New York.
We have the first state poll that includes data after the start of the Republican National Convention, covering Monday through Wednesday of the convention week. It is for Ohio, and it moves the poll average… toward Clinton.
This move does not change the status of Ohio. It was Weak Clinton before and it Weak Clinton now. But it does change the tipping point, which also moves toward Clinton.
The tipping point moved from a 2.0% Clinton lead in Pennsylvania to a 2.2% Clinton lead in Ohio.
So, aren’t we supposed to be seeing a convention bump for Trump? What’s up with a move toward Clinton during Trump’s convention?
The widespread view at this point is that the Republican Convention has been undisciplined and off message. It is tempting to look at this and start thinking about an “anti-bump” due to a botched convention.
That is premature. One poll in one state moved the average in that state a little, which because that state was near the tipping point also moved that a little bit… by 0.2%. There is not enough here to call a trend. If we saw a number of additional moves in this direction then maybe… but right now, it is just a single small move in isolation.
With the two conventions back to back, it is unlikely we will be able to detect a clear bump pattern for the two conventions individually. Instead, once both conventions are over, and there have been a week or two of post-convention polls, we’ll be able to get a sense if there has been a noticeable impact from the conventions.
In the mean time, we will of course keep watching for any trends that do emerge.
110.0 days until polls start to close on election night…
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: 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]
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]
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]
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]
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
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:
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.
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:
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.
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
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
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
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
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?
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:
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:
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.
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