This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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States with new poll data since the last update: Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, Delaware, Vermont, Indiana
Results from a Suffolk poll in Pennsylvania taken during the first three days of the Democratic National Convention move that state’s average toward Clinton.
The average moves from a 2.0% lead to a 4.4% lead. This is not an insubstantial jump toward Clinton, but either way we classify the state as “Weak Clinton”. Pennsylvania was the tipping point state though, so the tipping point moves too…
The tipping point moves from Clinton in Pennsylvania by 2.0% to Clinton in North Carolina by 2.3%.
This is a pretty small change in the grand scheme of things. Compare to the huge move of the tipping point in Trump’s direction from mid-June to mid-July.
Is the new jag downward the start of a new larger move back toward Clinton? Too soon to say. Stay tuned.
102.6 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.
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.
Since the last update there have been new polls in Arizona, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah. The latest ones in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Utah made differences to the Electoral Graphs model. Two of these moves favored Trump, but one favored Clinton.
We’ll cover them in order of how many electoral votes each state has.
Pennsylvania (20 EV)
The polling average moves from Clinton by 3.4% to Clinton by 1.2% as a really good poll for Clinton (15% lead) from April rolls off the average, replaced by polls showing a close race. The state doesn’t change categories, it is still a “Weak Clinton” state, but this continues the Trumpward movement in Pennsylvania, and since Pennsylvania was the tipping point state, it moves the tipping point in Trump’s direction:
On the tipping point metric, Trump has been improving consistently since the beginning of May. This despite the continued downward trend in the national numbers. As I discussed last time, this has happened in enough states at this point that it seems like it may be a real thing. Trump is getting closer in some states, while simultaneously falling further behind nationally.
Arizona (11 EV)
While the tipping point was moving toward Trump, Arizona has been moving toward Clinton. With the latest updates, Arizona moves from an 0.4% Trump lead to a 0.5% Clinton lead. Either way, Arizona is currently looking like a state that could go either way. But for the first time this cycle, Arizona is now on the blue side of the line. Arizona hasn’t gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1996. That isn’t as long as a state like Utah, but it is still quite some time, and it is remarkable that the poll average is showing Democrats with a lead, no matter how small.
Utah (6 EV)
Meanwhile, as Arizona dips into the blue, Utah, which had briefly dropped into the competitive zone, once again looks a little stronger for Trump, and thus moves out of the category that could go either way. Having said that, we’re still looking at the smallest Republican margin in Utah in many decades. Just not quite as narrow as it looked.
National Summary
With Arizona flipping to the blue, improving the expected case for Clinton, and Utah pulling back out of the competitive zone, reducing Clinton’s best case, the national map now looks like this:
The center of the spectrum of the states (excluding the solid states where one candidate leads by more than 10%) looks like this:
And the trend bubble…
It is hard to call a trend on this.
Look at the center line (the expected case) and every move since February has been toward Clinton.
Look at the top of the bubble (Trump’s best case) or the tipping point (see chart earlier in this post) and every move since early May has been toward Trump.
Look at the bottom of the bubble (Clinton’s best case) and things were moving toward Clinton until June, then started moving back toward Trump.
And of course the national polls have been moving toward Clinton for awhile now.
So what is really the trend? Well, all of them. They measure different things. Clinton’s absolute electoral college and popular vote leads are growing. But Trump is making more states close, which means his best case is improving, and the tipping point is getting closer. While meanwhile, for the moment anyway, Clinton’s best case may have hit a ceiling and be bouncing off it.
It is more complex than just looking at which direction a single number is going.
But in the end, if you have to look at only one number, it is probably the “expected” line. To win, Trump has to make that line move upward. It hasn’t been going that way for months, and it has never shown a Trump win.
Trump has 138.7 days to change that.
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.
Since the last notable change, Jill Stein became the presumptive nominee of the Green party. So I folded in 4-way poll results that included her in AZ/NC/OH/NJ/GA/PA/FL/CT. I also added new polls in VA/WI/CA. Of all of these updates, changes only resulted from the additions in Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Interestingly, although Trump has been plummeting in the national polls the last few weeks (see Pollster and RCP), 4 out of the 5 state level category changes and 4 out of 4 tipping point changes here at Election Graphs since Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee have been in Trump’s favor.
I have been attributing this to the natural lag in the kind of state poll averages tracked here… but the trend has gone on long enough that there may be something else happening. It is actually starting to look like Clinton’s lead has been narrowing in a number of states, even while Trump has been falling further behind at a national level. This is an odd pattern. It will be interesting to see if it continues.
In the mean time, lets look at the latest example:
Virginia
In Virginia on the eve of Trump becoming the clear winner on the Republican side he was behind by 12% in the Election Graphs average. With every poll since then, his position has improved. He’s now behind by only 3.2%. The most recent results were from June 13-15… well after the narrative of Trump’s collapse in the national polls was taking hold, and after weeks of Trump doing and saying things that seemed to be damaging his prospects nationally.
But yet the newest results have Trump down only 3% in a state where he had a poll showing him down 17% back in January. This trend does not look like a collapse. Quite the contrary. It does look like Trump is in a downward spiral in the national polls. But in Virginia specifically, he is doing better than he has since last August.
It seems strange that Virginia would be rapidly moving in the opposite direction than the national polls. Perhaps if we had weekly polls in Virginia we might have seen a different picture. Perhaps there have been large swings up and down that are just invisible because there have not been enough polls to show it. Maybe. But with the data we have, it really looks like Virginia has been on a Trumpward swing, despite the national trends.
With Virginia now close, we now include Trump winning it in “Trump’s best case”. So a quick look at the national trend:
Aside from the one bump showing Clinton making Utah close, the trend here at the state level looks like Trump making a number of states closer. First Florida, then North Carolina, then Pennsylvania, now Virginia.
Trump isn’t flipping states, but he is making more states close. The national picture may look different, but at the state level, which is what actually determines the winner in November, there isn’t a Trump collapse visible yet. Trump is actually looking stronger.
Pennsylvania
With Jill Stein now the presumptive nominee of the Green party, I added in a number of polls I had been tracking but not yet including in the analysis that included Jill Stein along with the major party candidates and Gary Johnson for the Libertarians. Among those was a poll in Pennsylvania showing a 1% Clinton lead over Trump. This did not change the status of Pennsylvania, which had already moved to Weak Clinton in the last update, but since Pennsylvania was the tipping point state, it moved that metric:
The tipping point state remains Pennsylvania, but the margin moves from a 3.8% Clinton lead to a 3.4% Clinton lead.
So with today’s updates, both Trump’s “best case” and his tipping point improve.
The downward trend in the national numbers may eventually show itself at the state level, but it hasn’t yet.
144.9 days until the polls start closing 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.
A couple of days ago, Utah moved from Strong Trump to Weak Trump in my classifications, so I speculated that Trump’s post-clinching bump might be over. But with the most recent batch of polls (from Pennsylvania, Florida and Connecticut) there is already another move in Trump’s direction. Remember that the picture given by trailing state poll averages will always “lag” the underlying situation a bit, but for the moment, the trend I track here still looks like it is moving in Trump’s direction.
Lets look at the details. The state that changes status is Pennsylvania:
The range of poll results in Pennsylvania has been huge. From a 15% Clinton lead to a 2% Trump lead. With the addition of the latest poll, one of the two polls that showed Clinton up by more than 10% fall off the average, and therefore the average pops in Trump’s direction.This brings the average in Pennsylvania to a 3.8% Clinton lead. Clinton is still ahead, but it is once again close enough that I allow for the possibility of Trump pulling the state into his column.
If Trump actually is able to get Pennsylvania, it is a big get. Pennsylvania has the sixth largest number of electoral votes. Adding Pennsylvania into Trump’s best case, the national trend now looks like this:
That spike in the upper right is Pennsylvania. In both electoral votes and the potential to make a difference in the race, Pennsylvania is more significant than Utah. If Clinton were to win Utah, it would be a surprise extra on top of an already large win, but a competitive Pennsylvania would potentially be very important to a winning path for Trump.
With Pennsylvania in the mix, if Trump won all the states where he leads, plus all the states where Clinton’s lead is less than 5%, Trump wins by a 50 electoral vote margin. This is his best “best case” since March.
Overall, despite Utah, and despite the fact the center “expected” line hasn’t moved, it looks like the overall trend here is still toward Trump.
The tipping point also moves with this change, and further boosts that impression:
The tipping point moves from a Clinton lead of 3.9% in Nevada to a Clinton lead of 3.8% in Pennsylvania.
Given Clinton clinching the Democratic nomination and the national polls already showing Clinton pulling ahead, an end to the Trump bounce and a beginning of a Clinton bounce is to be expected. But it isn’t showing up here yet…
152.7 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.
This week on the Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast Sam and Ivan spend most of the show on Election 2016. On the Republican side they discuss how recent results and the polls of upcoming states seem to be closing the door on the possibility of a contested convention and pointing to a straight up Trump nomination, as well as discussing Cruz/Fiorina, and what might make Trump worse than Cruz. On the Democratic side the discussion is on how Sanders seems to be finally admitting defeat, and on the veepstakes! Finally, they wrap it up with a lightning round covering all sorts of other issues they haven’t gotten around to lately.
Click below to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!
Recorded 2016-04-28
Length this week – 1:40:24
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Show Details:
- (0:00:10-0:05:41) But First
- Agenda
- Noisy Ivan
- The Beep is Back
- (0:06:25-0:59:59) Election 2016: Republicans
- PA/MD/CT/RI/DE Results
- PA Uncommitted Delegates
- Where Trump is in the Delegate Race now
- Indiana Polls
- California Polls
- Projections for the rest of the race
- Bye Bye Contested Convention Scenarios
- Cruz/Kasich Deal
- Cruz/Fiorina 2016!
- Presidential Trump
- Trump Foreign Policy?
- Trump vs Cruz, who is worse?
- (1:01:07-1:10:29) Election 2016: Democrats
- Bernie admitting he is done?
- Veepstakes
- Median Voter vs Base
- (1:11:08-1:40:04) Lightning Round
- Bathroom Laws
- Germany/Turkey free speech issue
- Matthew Keys Case
- The Chalkening
- Tubman $20
- Movie: The Gentle Leader Way
- Brexit
- Prince
- Brazil
- Apple Earnings
- Saudi No Oil Plan
- Car vs Helicopter
Trump did very well yesterday in PA/MD/CT/RI/DE.
In pledged delegates the results were Trump 110, Kasich 5, Cruz 3.
That is a crushing win, but that is not why I say everything is falling into place. Trump did a little better than expected in pledged delegates, but a massive Trump win had been expected for awhile. This was not a surprise, and was already baked into people’s projections for the rest of the race.
Even with this built into the expectations, as of my post last week we were looking at odds between about 40% on the low side and 64% on the high side for Trump actually getting to 1237 delegates and having an outright majority before the convention. A week later, several things change that and make an outright Trump win look far more likely, and a multi-ballot convention much less likely. If it isn’t the pledged delegate results from last night, then what is it?
The first thing is the officially uncommitted delegates from Pennsylvania. In past contests Trump has done a horrible job getting his loyalists into the slots that are nominally uncommitted, or for that matter even into the slots that are bound to him on the first ballot. It was plausible to expect that Trump would do similarly poorly with Pennsylvania’s uncommitted delegates which are elected by name on the ballot… without any indication on the ballot of who they support.
But Trump appears to have gotten his act together, making sure delegate slates were available to Trump supporters and such. Between delegates that explicitly said they support Trump, and those who said they would vote the way their district went (and all of them went for Trump), Trump ends up with 45 of the 54 uncommitted delegates by my estimates. There is some ambiguity in the statements made by some of these uncommitted delegates and some other folks have estimated the number of Trump votes slightly lower. But all the estimates have Trump winning most of these delegates.
This was unexpected, and also gives more confidence of Trump’s delegate wrangling abilities going forward. (Although Pennsylvania was the biggest pot of uncommitted delegates.)
Add in the uncommitted delegates that have expressed a preference (45 Trump, 3 Cruz, 3 Kasich, 3 TBD) and 2 additional uncommitted Cruz delegates from North Dakota that I logged in the last week, and the net change since New York ends up as:
Trump +155, Cruz +8, Kasich +8.
The new raw totals look like this:
The finish line is in sight. Trump only needs 233 delegates to win this thing directly. No multi-ballot convention, just a straight up win on the first ballot.
For the first time since Super Tuesday at the beginning of March, Trump also actually has a majority of the delegates so far… 52.32% of the delegates.
But what does it take to keep that? Time for the “% of remaining delegates needed” graph:
First note that with yesterday’s results Cruz has been mathematically eliminated from the possibility of a first ballot victory. Trump is now the ONLY candidate that can win on a first ballot. Everybody else is done unless there is a brokered convention… or I suppose unless Trump drops out or something crazy like that.
Looking directly at Trump’s line… Trump needed 53.52% of the delegates to improve his position. Since New York he actually got 90.64% of the delegates. This obviously means his position improved a lot. He now only needs 42.06% of the remaining delegates to win.
That means he could do 20% worse at delegate gathering in all the remaining contests than he has so far and still win.
If the Republicans allocated delegates proportionately everywhere like the Democrats do, this would clearly be over. It would be Trump’s nomination, and we’d be done.
Because of how so many Republican states tilt the delegate results to the winner though, if the anti-Trump’s were strong, there would still be a path to block Trump.
The anti-Trump scenarios that gave us odds of a multi-ballot convention relied on three things.
The first we mentioned above… Trump’s failure to win delegates when they were selected individually instead of being bound to primary results. Trump dispensed with that in Pennsylvania.
The second was Indiana. Until the last week, Indiana had not been polled. The anti-Trump contested convention scenarios all relied on Trump losing Indiana. Well, last week Indiana was finally polled. Three times. The results? The RCP average has Trump +6.3%. Given Indiana’s delegate rules, a win like that would get Trump most of Indiana’s 57 delegates… possibly all of them. Oops. And Trump now only needs to be getting 42% of the delegates to be on pace to win.
The third was California. Trump has been ahead in the polls in California forever. But the anti-Trump folks were hoping to keep him from winning by too much and to hold down his delegate total. But in the last week of polling, Cruz has been falling and Trump has been rising, so Trump’s margins have just been growing. RCP now has a 17.4% Trump lead in their California average. Assuming Trump wins Indiana and some of the other remaining states, Trump will very likely only need 30% or less of the delegates in California in order to wrap things up. If he is winning by almost 20%, that is going to be very easy to achieve.
The simulator at The Upshot using default assumptions now shows an almost certain Trump win.
The FiveThirtyEight simulator “follow the experts” model shows Trump 27 votes short of the magic number… but they don’t include ANY of the officially uncommitted delegates that have said they support Trump. Add those in… there are just under 50 of them now depending how you count… and you are easily over 1237.
Finally, Sam Wang’s numerical simulations of the rest of the race have moved from a 64% chance of a Trump win a little over a week ago to a 94% chance today.
I see no reason to disagree with this estimate.
We are no longer on a knife’s edge between a contested convention and an outright Trump win.
#NeverTrump is now hanging on by a thread. They maybe aren’t quite as far gone as Sanders is on the Democratic side, but it is getting close. Their last hope is to try to start turning things around with a surprise win in Indiana. Even with that though, Trump’s odds look very good.
Between yesterday’s results, polls in Indiana, and polls in California, this now looks like an almost certain outright Trump win.
This is now Trump’s to lose. Given everything he has done so far that pundits thought would sink him but in fact only strengthened him, it is hard to see how exactly that would happen.
So… time to start paying more attention to Clinton vs Trump. Right now that looks like Clinton 338 to Trump 200, a 138 electoral vote win for Clinton. But things are still early, and that will change…
Update 2016-05-02 17:52 UTC: Uncommitted delegate update plus adjustment in Rhode Island. Net change: Trump +1, Cruz -2.
Update 2016-05-03 03:53 UTC: Uncommitted delegate update checking multiple sources. Net change: Cruz +2, Kasich -2, Trump -4. (See my wiki for my current best estimates of uncommitted delegate preferences.)
Update 2016-05-04 08:11 UTC: Updates (including uncommitted) in Nevada, Wyoming and North Dakota. Net change: Cruz +6, Carson -2.
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. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. 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.
Even the Sanders folks are starting… just starting… to admit it might be over.
Clinton won 218 delegates yesterday. Sanders won 166.
In addition, since New York there were new superdelegate endorsements and updates in Illinois and Ohio which have netted Clinton +9, Sanders +1.
So including everything since New York, we have Clinton +227, Sanders +167.
That means Clinton got 57.61% of the delegates. She only needed 28.73%.
Meanwhile Sanders got 42.39% of the delegates. He needed 71.39%.
In practical terms this has been for over a long time. Absent a huge unexpected event of course.
But we still watch it play out.
Here are the relevant graphs:
Clinton now only needs 231 of the remaining 1200 delegates to win. That’s 19.25% of the remaining delegates.
Sanders on the other hand needs 971 of the 1200. That is 80.92%.
Guess which is most likely?
Or, of course, still, tons of Clinton superdelegates could defect and change this a bit. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that though.
Update 2016-05-01 17:08 UTC: Superdelegate updates plus change to Ohio pledged delegates. Net change: Clinton +11, Sanders -1.
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. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. 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.
New general election polls in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania since the last update but the one that makes a difference is Pennsylvania:
After a few months in “Weak Clinton” territory, the polling average in Pennsylvania returns to “Strong Clinton” with Clinton now leading Trump by 5.2%. That is just barely out of the “close” category, but you have to draw the line somewhere. For the categorization on ElectionGraphs.com, only states where the margin is under 5% are considered states that could go either way.
So, Trump’s “best case” where he wins all the close states gets weaker:
And since Pennsylvania was the tipping point in Clinton vs Trump, the tipping point moves toward Clinton as well:
With this change added, the impression of Trump peaking against Clinton in January and being on a decline ever since is reinforced. With a couple of exceptions, almost every change since then has been in Clinton’s favor.
It is almost as if the things that have propelled Trump to the top of the GOP race may simultaneously be turning off general election voters. Go figure. Who would have guessed?
The new overall summary of the Clinton vs Trump race is below:
If Trump wins all the close states, he still wins. This is still a race, and Democrats should not get complacent.
But things have not been moving in Trump’s direction for the general while he has been fighting for the GOP nomination… which is still by no means locked up. If Trump wants to win in November and not just in July at the Republican convention, at some point he needs to do the pivot to the general election. Right now it looks like the earliest that can really happen is June, and quite possibly not until July… assuming the nomination doesn’t go to someone else at a contested convention.
The longer it takes for Trump to get to the point where he can make a big change in direction to try to appeal to general election voters, the weaker he is likely to be in November.
229.3 days until polls start closing 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. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. 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.
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