This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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Clinton’s deterioration against the Republican field continues. There are two changes of note today, both show Republicans getting stronger against Clinton.
Clinton vs Rubio
Clinton has now not been ahead in a Clinton vs Rubio poll in Florida since June. And four of the five polls in the average show Rubio leads of 5% or more. With the latest one of these polls, my poll average now shows Rubio’s lead in Florida as 5.6%. That takes Florida out of the “close state” category. So Clinton’s “best case” no longer includes winning Florida.
The scale of this collapse in Florida is particularly striking. As recently as last October, Clinton had a greater than 10% lead against Rubio in Florida. This put Florida in the “Solid Clinton” category. But over the course of the last year, that lead evaporated. And now Rubio is not just ahead, but significantly ahead. Now, this chart itself is a perfect example of how much things can change in a year. We are too far away for election day for this to be predictive of what would actually happen in Florida in a Clinton vs Rubio race next year. But this still looks very bad for Clinton.
The new situation summary for Clinton looks like this:
Clinton is still ahead… barely. But it is looking much more like a toss up. A tipping point of 2.4% could literally disappear overnight with the right events happening in the campaign. As recently as March, Rubio’s best case was to lose by 96 electoral votes. Now Clinton vs Rubio is too close to make a confident prediction, and even Clinton’s best case is deteriorating.
Florida is a big state, Florida is important. Clinton being this far behind in Florida is a significant issue for Clinton. Clinton doesn’t NEED Florida to win, but the paths without it are much tighter.
Clinton vs Bush
The latest results in Michigan for Clinton vs Bush don’t change the category of the state. It was “Weak Clinton” before the latest poll, and is “Weak Clinton” after the poll. But the move from Clinton by 4.2% to Clinton by 2.2% moved Michigan past several other states when you order the states by Clinton vs Bush margin, including moving past Ohio, which had been the tipping point state. Without Michigan to the left of Ohio, the tipping point moved from Clinton by 3.8% in Ohio, to Clinton by 2.4% in North Carolina.
Only four very close states, all with margins at 2.4% or less, need to flip to put Bush in the lead. In terms of tipping point, Clinton vs Bush is now tied with Clinton vs Rubio as the two of the five best polled candidate pairs that do the best against Clinton.
(Walker has of course now dropped out, he will likely be replaced in this comparison chart soon.)
When looking at the tipping point across these five candidate matches, while all but Huckabee made significant gains over Clinton in the last year, it is clear that in the last few months only Rubio and Bush have continued that movement in the last few months… but they have moved things significantly. The picture for the general election is starting to look very different depending on which Republican is up against Clinton.
What about Trump? Carson? Fiorina? Or what about Sanders and Biden? The bottom line is that compared to the candidates above, they simply have not been considered “serious candidates” for long enough to have a significant amount of state level polling. In my ranking of the best polled candidate combinations, Clinton vs Fiorina is #21, Clinton vs Carson is #22, Clinton vs Trump is #23. The highest combination with Sanders is #9. The highest with Biden is #10. You can look at these combinations if you want, but frankly there simply has not been enough polling yet on the state level to get a good picture of what those races really would look like, so interpret anything you see there with extreme caution.
412.4 days until polls start to close.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.
On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast, Sam and Ivan do it again, laying down a commentary track for the second Republican debate. Yes, the whole thing. All three hours of it. We kibitz as Trump and Carson and Bush and Cruz and Rubio and all the rest argue about the issues of the day. Oh, and of course, Fiorina. Ivan’s nemesis Fiorina. Ivan always has nice things to say about her. You’ve probably seen the debate, now listen to our take!
Click to listen or subscribe… then let us know your own thoughts!
Recorded 2015-09-18
Length this week – 3:13:32
 1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
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Show Details:
- (0:00:10-1:01:04) Debate Segment I
- Intro from Sam and Ivan
- Candidate Self-Introductions
- Trust Trump with Red Button?
- Outsiders vs Insiders
- Russia / Iran / China / Syria
- Should Kim Davis follow the law?
- Planned Parenthood and Government Shutdowns
- Fiorina’s Face
- (1:02:20-1:42:06) Debate Segment II
- Immigration
- Fiorina/Trump Business Records
- Tax Plans and Budgets
- Minimum Wage
- Political Styles
- (1:43:13-2:16:07) Debate Segment III
- Trump knowing Foreign Policy
- Would Jeb be a repeat of 41 and 43 on Foreign Policy?
- Iraq / Syria / Afghanistan
- Supreme Court / Abortion
- (2:16:46-2:42:24) Debate Segment IV
- Marijuana
- Guns
- Social Security
- Climate Change
- Vaccines and Autism
- (2:43:02-3:03:32) Debate Segment V
- Woman on the $10 bill
- Secret Service Codenames
- How will the world be different after your presidency?
- (3:04:33-3:13:12) Wrap Up
- Sam and Ivan predict the impact of the debate
Well, last time I noted the “First good news for Clinton in months!“. I mentioned then that one data point does not make a trend. And today, with the next change worth noting to the five best polled candidate combinations, we indeed don’t get more good news for Clinton. Instead, this time we get Iowa flipping to Bush:
Only two of the last five polls in Iowa show a Bush lead, but they both show big leads. When averaged out, you have a 1.4% Bush margin… and a trend which has been moving away from Clinton since February. If the moves toward Hillary in New Hampshire mentioned in that last post were the start of any bottoming out for Clinton, there is no evidence of it here in Iowa. Indeed, if anything, the trend away from Clinton seems to be accelerating.
In the national Bush vs Clinton view, Bush is now losing by 78 electoral votes in the “expected” case where each candidate wins every state where they lead the poll averages. Yes, this is still a loss, but it is better than Bush has done in this matchup since the start of polling for 2016.
Looking at how Bush is doing compared to the rest of the best polled Republicans, Rubio is still doing better against Clinton, but Bush isn’t far behind. Huckabee, Paul and Walker’s margins against Clinton are significantly worse. In this particular view, they aren’t really gaining on Clinton at all. This doesn’t give the full picture though, as a quick look at the tipping point shows:
Bottom line, despite the move in her direction last time, the overall trends continue to be against Clinton. When and if this deterioration stops, and how that affects the primary races, is the big question of the campaign at the moment.
428.1 days until the first general election polls close.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.
I’ve mentioned a number of times at this point that Clinton has had a long streak of bad news. The last time one of my updates was unambiguously positive for Clinton was back in May! That streak ends today, with movement in New Hampshire prompted by a new PPP poll.
Three of the top five best polled candidate combinations flipped from “Weak Republican” to “Weak Clinton” because of this update:
So for Rubio, Paul and Walker, New Hampshire flips back to blue (although not by much). Clinton vs Bush just narrowly avoided doing the same thing, as Bush’s margin declined from 1.6% to 0.2%, but didn’t quite pass over the line.
New Hampshire is a little state. Only 4 electoral votes. If you look at the “expected cases” this just makes a small move for each of these three candidates:
As a move, this isn’t all that much. And Clinton is significantly ahead on this metric against all five Republicans. So New Hampshire’s electoral votes aren’t determining the outcome here.
But after three months solid of posts where I’ve been talking about how the Republican position is getting stronger, and Clinton’s position was getting weaker, is there significance to a move, any move, actually going in Clinton’s direction? Well, maybe. But one point does not make a trend.
This could be an indicator that Clinton has bottomed for now and we’re not going to see further declines for the time being. Or, just as easily, perhaps these PPP results are a significant outlier, and not representative of an actual change of mood in New Hampshire, in which case the next New Hampshire polls may pull the state back into the red zone.
As usual, we will just have to wait and see. In the meantime though, Clinton’s losing streak has been broken.
493.0 days until polls start closing.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.
A bunch of changes today prompted by the latest Quinnipiac Swing State Poll. The TL;DR is that Clinton’s situation continues to deteriorate.
The Republicans are gaining on her, despite any talk myself or others have been doing about the Trump phenomenon hurting Republicans more generically. If that is going to happen, there is no good evidence of it yet, at least in state level general election polling.
Specifically, Rubio and Bush are nipping at Clinton’s heels. In today’s update, Bush’s best case moves into winning territory, Rubio’s already winning best case gets even better, both candidates improve their “expected” results and the tipping points are getting very close.
To actually win at this point, Rubio only needs to hold the states he already leads and flip North Carolina (Clinton +0.4%) and Pennsylvania (Clinton +2.4%). Bush has to flip a few states that are already leaning Rubio as well, but at this point he has his tipping point down to only a 3.8% Clinton lead. Easily within the reach of a campaign that goes his way.
Now the details for those who want them.
Clinton vs Rubio
Rubio moves states into better categories for him in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. A quick look at all three charts:
Now, an argument could be made that some of these new data points look like outliers. But we don’t know until we have follow up polls, and that is why we use poll averages and not single polls anyway, so we include the polls in the average and just see what that does.
Florida (29 ev) flips from Weak Clinton to Weak Rubio, improving Rubio’s expected result to Clinton 299 to Rubio 239. This is still a 60 point electoral point loss, but this is the best “expected case” we have seen on any Republican with a significant amount of state level polling against Clinton.
Meanwhile, with both Pennsylvania (20 ev) and Ohio (18 ev) moving from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton, a very large chunk of electoral votes gets added into the “possible pick up” category for Rubio’s best case, which is now Clinton 227, Rubio 311… an 84 electoral vote WIN for Rubio. This is also the best “best case” we have seen for any significantly polled Republican so far.
This is what Rubio’s “bubble” looks like now:
Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio are huge electoral prizes. They make a massive difference on these charts. With a Republican in the lead in Florida, and competitive in Pennsylvania and Ohio, it really is a whole different ball game.
This is the Clinton vs Rubio map right now. With a map like this, Clinton still wins, but it is very very close, and the slightest issue would give the election to Rubio.
Clinton vs Bush
Looking at the Bush charts in FL/PA/OH:
Bush also flips Florida. This improves Bush’s expected case to Clinton 314, Bush 224. This is a 90 electoral vote loss, but better than Bush has looked since late 2013.
And Bush also moves Ohio from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton. Unlike Rubio though, he does not quite bring Pennsylvania into this category. The trend is there. Pennsylvania has been moving toward Bush all year. But Clinton’s lead is still over 5%. Perhaps that will change with the next poll. But Ohio by itself is enough to improve Bush’s best case to Clinton 253, Bush 285, which is a 32 electoral vote Bush WIN.
So we get Bush’s new bubble:
And his new map:
At this point, Clinton vs Bush and Clinton vs Rubio are the only two of the five best polled candidate pairs where the Republicans have a winning best case. But are the trends heading there for anybody else? Lets take a quick look.
Comparisons
Sometimes the national charts can give good comparative insight, but this time since we’ve been concentrating on FL/PA/OH, lets just look at those comparisons for now.
So just at a glance, in Ohio and Pennsylvania all or most Republicans are improving against Clinton. They almost seem to be moving as a bunch. (Except maybe Huckabee.)
But it looks different in Florida. In Florida, Rubio and Bush have separated themselves from the rest of the crowd. They are the only two of these five making Florida competitive. The others are just wandering around in Strong Clinton territory, with no clear trend between them.
It is very hard to map a Republican win without Florida. Possible maybe, but very hard. The trends are clearly going toward the Republicans in many states. For Rubio and Bush, Florida is doing the same. If the general trend against Clinton continues, we should start seeing other candidates gain ground in Florida too, but it isn’t in evidence yet.
But overall, Clinton is losing ground, and the race is getting closer.
445.1 days until polls start to close.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.
Two sets of changes worth noting today triggered by new PPP polls in Iowa and Missouri. The streak of changes going against Clinton and in favor of the various Republicans continues. As I mentioned before, the last time one of my updates was unequivocally good news for Clinton was in May!
Iowa
The July Qunnipiac Poll showing Rubio with an 8% is looking kind of like an outlier, and without it we wouldn’t be quite there yet, but there has been a clear trend toward Rubio in the average going back a year. With the newest poll (plus that possible outlier) the average moves from “Weak Clinton” to “Weak Rubio”. This changes the “expected” result in this matchup:
The expected result is now Clinton 328 to Rubio 210, which is a 118 electoral point loss by Rubio. Now, while this is still of course a significant loss, it is significant because it beats Romney’s 126 electoral vote loss against Obama in 2012. The last time one of the five best polled candidate combinations had the Republican outperforming Romney was back in June when Bush had pulled his expected loss down to only 98 electoral votes.
While there has been a general drumbeat of bad news for Clinton in my updates for the last three months, this particular chart doesn’t yet show an clear and indisputable breakout move beyond the range where these candidates have been bouncing around. If you only look at the changes since June, it starts to look like a trend though, and given the movement in other metrics, it is still reasonable to interpret this as a bad trend for Clinton.
The question though will be if the Republicans can start an actual breakout move where instead of talking about how it looks like they might beat Romney, we start talking about how it looks like they might beat Clinton. We aren’t close to that yet.
One thing people have been speculating about has been if the prominence of Trump on the Republican side right now is actually harming the party overall, specifically in terms of the ability of the other candidates to compete against Clinton. So far, there is no evidence for that at all in the numbers we track here.
Missouri
When I officially launched the election tracking site and posted my first analysis for 2016 I mentioned that if you looked at the average results for the last five general elections… the data I used to “seed” the analysis before there were actual state polls… there were only SIX states where the average margin in these five elections was less than 5%. They were Nevada (Dem+2.8%), Ohio (Dem+1.7%), Florida (Dem+0.9%), Colorado (Rep+0.0%), Virginia (Rep+1.6%) and Missouri (Rep+2.8%). All of these states were polled long ago, some many times… except Missouri. Today’s PPP poll is the first 2016 polling for Missouri that I am aware of. So finally, we get a current view of the state.
Missouri was basically on this “Close State” list because Bill Clinton won the state by 6.3% in 1996, the oldest of the five elections I used for the initial average. Since then the Republicans won by 3.3%, 7.2%, 0.1%, and 9.4%. OK, that 0.1% in 2008 was really close. And the 3.3% in 2000 wasn’t a complete blow out. But in general it seems like the trend has been redder in Missouri.
The new poll tested Clinton against 11 different Republicans. She lost by between 7% and 15% depending on which Republican you looked at. (They also tested Sanders against 4 Republicans with similar results.)
Bottom line, looks like 2016 is looking a lot more like 2012 or 2004 than 2008 or 2000. That is, a pretty strongly Republican state. Now, it is just one poll, but the results are strong enough that the state immediately moved from “Weak Republican” to “Strong Republican” for all five of the best polled candidate combinations. (And actually for all the rest of the combinations they polled too.)
The chart of this isn’t actually all that interesting on a state level. But Missouri no longer being a close state means that Clinton’s “best case” against all five Republicans weakens a little bit, so lets have a quick look at that graph:
You don’t see a lot of volatility in this chart, simply because there are a lot fewer polls of the states that make a difference here. You see a lot of polls around the tipping point, and around the states that are really close, because they give insight into if the Republicans are catching up. Given the current state of Clinton’s lead, polling of the states Republicans are generally already ahead in only gives insight into how much extra Clinton could win by if everything possible went her way, which is fundamentally less interesting.
Never the less, with Missouri’s 10 electoral votes out of play at the moment, Clinton’s best case margin drops by 20 electoral votes against all these candidates. In the case where she wins all the states she is ahead in, plus all the states where the Republican currently leads by less than 5%, she now beats Paul by 204 electoral votes. Rubio, Bush, Huckabee and Walker get beaten by a more modest 156 electoral votes. These are of course pretty good margins in today’s polarized electorate. But to get to these kinds of numbers, just about everything would have to go Clinton’s way… which is not the trend today.
But of course, we have 454.2 days until the election. Lots can change in 454.2 days. :-)
Best Polled List
I should also mention that the “best polled” list got shuffled a bit with the latest updates. Clinton vs Paul once again grabs the “best polled” spot and becomes the default view on election2016.abulsme.com. Meanwhile Clinton vs Christie drops to 6th place and out of the group we highlight here, replaced by Clinton vs Huckabee returning to the top five after a short absence. Clinton vs Huckabee is just barely out of the top 5, but any other candidate combinations are far behind in terms of the volume and breadth of available polling on the state level at the moment. We’re currently giving the most attention here to Clinton vs Paul, Rubio, Bush, Huckabee and Walker.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.
On this week’s Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast Sam and Ivan throw the usual format out the window and instead give the MST3K treatment to the Republican Debate. If you don’t know what that means, what happened is we played the debate, and recorded our thoughts and reactions to it in real time. So if you didn’t watch the straight up debate already, or even if you did, listen to our commentary now! Oh yeah, and at the beginning we talked a bit about a couple of recent robberies too.
Recorded 2015-08-07
Length this week – 2:24:50
1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
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Show Details:
- Break-ins and Robberies
- Republican Debate Segment 1
- Intros
- Support Nominee?
- Electibility
- Immigration
- Republican Debate Segment 2
- Immigration
- Terror and National Security
- Obamacare and role of Federal Government
- Republican Debate Segment 3
- Hillary Clinton
- Economy, Jobs and Money
- Iran Deal
- Republican Debate Segment 4
- Republican Debate Segment 5
- Republican Debate Segment 6
- Wrap Up Analysis
First of all, a little bookkeeping. With the latest batch of polls, the “five best polled candidate combinations” gets shuffled up a bit. Clinton vs Huckabee falls off the top five (bye Huck!), replaced by Clinton vs Walker. Meanwhile, Clinton vs Rubio moves into the “best polled” slot, becoming the default view on the election2016.abulsme.com site. So, for the moment, that means the candidate combinations I’ll talk about in these updates are Clinton vs Rubio, Paul, Bush, Walker and Christie. Huckabee honestly is very close behind in the #6 spot. After that though there is a pretty big gap in polling before we get to the next combinations. There may be lots of talk about Trump lately. Or of Biden or Sanders as Clinton alternatives. Or of the other ELEVEN Republican candidates. But in comparison to the combinations I mentioned earlier, state level polling involving those folks is still pretty sparse. We’ll talk about the rest of the candidates if and when there is good enough polling on them to get them into the top five. Or at least close.
OK, with that out of the way, the main news from the latest polls. Specifically, with a WMUR poll in New Hampshire added in, this happened:
Rubio, Paul, Bush, and Walker all took the lead in New Hampshire as measured by my poll average. Just barely. But still. They are now in the lead. Christie wasn’t polled this time, but was lagging the others quite a bit anyway.
Just a few months ago, New Hampshire was looking like it was pretty reliably “Strong Clinton” against almost all Republican challengers. (The exception being Christie amusingly enough, since he is now the weakest of the bunch.) This is a pretty big move. It seems to be parallel across many candidates, so it is likely this is more a case of Clinton getting weaker than anything any Republican candidate is doing specifically.
So what does New Hampshire flipping do to the “expected” results if the election was held today?
Well, OK, a couple bumps there at the end. Even with this though, this particular chart doesn’t show a clear trend. All the lines are bouncing around, but aren’t clearly trending in one direction or another.
But, looking more generally at my Electoral College updates, the last time I did one that was fully and unreservedly about something moving in Clinton’s direction was in May! From the end of May, through June, through July, and now into August, every update has been about Republican gains. (There were a couple Clinton gains in the mix, but there were always overshadowed by moves toward the Republicans that happened at the same time.)
Despite this, everything points to Clinton still being way ahead overall. As one example of this, even with New Hampshire, none of the five candidates on the chart above even match Romney’s performance in 2012. The best of the bunch in “expected result”, Rubio and Paul, still lose to Clinton by 130 electoral votes.
Clinton can’t be happy with the trend though. Yes, things are expected to tighten. But I’m sure she would prefer if they didn’t anyway!
We still have lots of time until the election. The first Republican debates are coming up later today. Obviously the main thing people will be watching for are how it may impact the standing of the various candidates in the Republican race, but Democrats and Independents are watching too, so don’t be surprised if there are effects on the general election matchup too.
And of course, this is just the beginning of debate season. Many more to come…
460.7 days until the first general election polls close.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.
In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan talk about:
* Skype / Wisdom Teeth / Sam Luck
* Trump!!! / Kasich / Fiorina / Rubio in Reach!
* Jeep Hack
* Apple Earnings
* Lightning Round
* * Movie: Star Wars Holiday Special
* * Planned Parenthood video
* * Gawker post and fallout
* * Chattanooga
* * Ashley Madison
* * Iran Deal
Recorded 2015-07-23
Length this week – 1:43:32
1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
View Podcast in iTunes
View Raw Podcast Feed
Download MP3 File
Follow the podcast on Facebook
To get the headline out of the way… for the first time since officially launching my 2016 electoral college polling tracking back in November, one of the Republicans with a significant amount of state level polling is within reach of Clinton. We now see a scenario where “if the election was held today” and the Republican was to outperform their polling… but by an amount that is not inconceivable… then the Republican would win.
Specifically, while Clinton is still ahead against all five of the “best polled” Republicans challenging her (Bush, Rubio, Paul, Christie and Huckabee), if you give Rubio not only all the states he is already ahead in, but also all of the states where Clinton’s lead is less than 5%, then we end up with Clinton 265 to Rubio 273, a narrow 8 electoral vote victory for Rubio. The idea here is that a 5% lead is small enough that it can easily slip away under the right circumstances. So this does’t mean that Rubio is actually ahead, but it means that Rubio winning against Clinton is within the realm of the plausible.
This also shows up in the “tipping point”, which now shows a Clinton lead of less than 5% for the first time since our launch:
Rubio is the first Republican to manage this, but trends have been against Clinton in recent months. Bush is just barely short of this marker. His best case is to lose by only 4 electoral votes. If he makes one more state close, winning will also be within range. And Paul isn’t that much further behind.
Yes, yes, Clinton is still significantly ahead, the best any Republican does if you just give them the states they are actually ahead in is to match Romney’s loss in 2012. But still, we now have at least one Republican where the polls are close enough that a victory is at least imaginable! So as per the title we have a race!
Now the state level details for those who want them…
Qunnipiac released the latest results in their Presidential Swing State Poll series today. There was a lot of buzz about how bad it was for Clinton, showing her behind to Bush, Walker and Rubio in Colorado, Iowa and Virginia. Indeed, this single poll looked really bad for her in all three states… in fact enough out of line with other recent results that it is very tempting to think it may just be an outlier rather than a real indication of a major change.
Of course, that is why we do poll averages. Looking at the averages, adding these new results moves things toward the Republicans, but nowhere near as dramatically as if you just looked at the Quinnipiac results in isolation.
Quinnipiac polled nine different candidate combinations, but I only look at the five combinations that have the best polling over all. So I’m not going to talk about the Sanders vs Bush matchup that Quinnipiac polled. Sorry. (That’s the 17th best polled candidate combination by the way.)
Anyway, of the five best polled combinations, only Clinton vs Rubio had any significant changes. Beyond the headline, lets look at the two states that actually changed status.
First off, Colorado:
 ‘
Clinton vs Rubio in Colorado has been very lightly polled… only four polls since the 2012 election, so the 2012 election results themselves are still included in the average. But the latest result is just enough to leave Rubio ahead by 0.1%. With Rubio now ahead in Colorado, the “expected” electoral college result moves to Clinton 338, Rubio 200, a 138 electoral vote margin for Clinton. (For comparison, Obama’s margin over Romney was 126 electoral votes.)
Virginia also changed categories:
There have been quite a few more Clinton vs Rubio polls in Virginia than there were in Colorado. The new Quinnipiac poll accelerated a trend toward Rubio, and pushed Virginia from “Strong Clinton” to “Weak Clinton”. This is of course what prompted the improvement in Rubio’s best case and put him within reach of Clinton.
The full Clinton vs Rubio spectrum looks like this today:
And the full summary:
To win, Rubio would still need to flip North Carolina (1.2% Clinton lead), Iowa (1.3% Clinton lead), Florida (1.8% Clinton lead), New Hampshire (2.0% Clinton lead), Nevada (3.8% Clinton lead) and Virginia (4.6% Clinton lead). That sounds like a lot, but if national events or campaigning move things across all states, it means only 2.3% of voter have to change their minds to change the outcome. Even in today’s highly polarized climate, that is easily imaginable.
So, for the first time since the 2012 elections, it is starting to look like we have a real race. This is not unexpected. In my November post “The Race Begins” I said:
The real campaign against Clinton hasn’t ramped up yet. Lots of mud will be thrown. And the Republican candidates will get more and more visibility. Although anything is possible in either direction, it is quite possible that what we are seeing right now will be Clinton’s high water mark. The race is likely to get closer as we move through 2015 and people get more engaged.
Yup. That looks like what has been happening.
475.0 days until the first general election polls close.
Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.
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