In a Washington Post-ABC News poll (538.com rating: A+) of registered voters conducted August 24 through 28, Donald Trump’s favorable/unfavorable rating was 38/61. Hillary Clinton’s was 38/59. (The “strongly unfavorable” numbers were even closer: Trump 47, Clinton 46.)
Among those identifying as Independents, Clinton is more unpopular than Trump. Trump is at 32/63, Clinton is at 31/66. (For “strongly unfavorable”: Trump 44, Clinton 47.)
Sexism at work? Among women, Clinton is underwater at 45/52.
Millennial prejudice? Among adults 40 to 64, she is at 42/55. Among those 65 and older, 42/57.
There has been much speculation on what institutional disease of the Republican Party permitted the elevation of such a universally loathed candidate. That Clinton appears very likely to win the election does not invalidate the question of why the Democratic Party allowed the same.
She will not be so fortunate in opponents come 2020.
Probably about as invalid as the occasional 2012 polls that had Romney in the lead.
The unknown is what all those eligible voters do with their dissatisfaction with both candidates. So far the lean right and lean left folks are waiting for the other group to show their hand among the available options: don’t vote, vote third party, leave the top-line blank, or go with the lean. If before the election either one begins to break in a discernible direction, the other will match it.
Why probably invalid?
Does this pollster have a methodological flaw that 538.com is unaware of or insensitive to?
Probably because it lacks internal (prior polls by this pollster) and external (the results and trends reported by other pollsters) consistency. Doesn’t mean this one is wrong — as of the past week — but if it’s not, it means that this pollster either got a better sample than it and others have gotten before or it got a leading edge sample. If it’s the latter condition, other pollsters will confirm the results in the next couple of weeks. The former condition is unlikely.
Getting a perfect sample population is near impossible. It’s why pollsters sample again and again because the more people sampled the higher the probability that the total sample is nearer to the actual total population. Hence, the reason to always check out the internal and external consistency of any one poll report. The other difficulty in election polling is the fluidity within the total population. That tends to be lower than lagging (but highly and irrationally optimistic) candidates estimate and higher than leading candidates acknowledge. However, that’s the qualitative (or art), and not quantitative, aspect of polling. Practice or experience improves the accuracy if the pollster maintains honest objectivity. It’s why Seltzer/DM Register routinely do better than other pollsters, particularly a newbie like LORAS, in Iowa. OTOH, Gallup hasn’t improved with age.
Two Wisconsin polls from very good pollsters, Marquette Law and Monmouth, both Clinton +5.
Obama by 7, so this is effectively showing a 2 point race (Obama won by roughly 4).
I am not close to panic or anything.
But no one has seen Wisconsin that close, and give credence to the Emerson Wisconsin poll that had Clinto only up 3.
Gulp.
I would like to see some CO or VA polling. Impossible to deny race has not closed in Midwest:
Last 2 polls in MI were 3 and 7
Last 2 in WI are 5
Neither were on anybodies radar.
Meanwhile ABC teasing a shocker poll.
No need to panic. WI has been “blue” from 1988 through 2012 and it’s only in the past two elections that the Dem nominee won with a majority.
Considering that HRC lost the WI Dem primary by a significant margin, it’s not surprising that her numbers remain weak there. Troubling is that Feingold isn’t doing any better then HRC (in a two-way).
HRC’s worst number is in a four-way among RVs at 37% but under that scenario Trump is down to 32% and the “need to think more about it” percentage jumps from 7% to 13%.
FWIW, the graph of the TPM PollTracker average shows Trump not denting his high-30s ceiling with Clinton dipping below her previous mid-40s floor.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/clinton-lead-shrinks-in-wisconsin
Yes, but she’s always been in the lead. His awfulness keeps trumping her awfulness. From the low base numbers of each in a four-way, HRC:37 and DT:32, the undecideds would have to break 70% for Trump (and without any movement away from Johnson or Stein) for him to win. That’s extremely unlikely because how the undecideds break is always within the range of the sitting president’s numbers. Those most supportive of or most angry with a sitting president aren’t undecided at this point. My guesstimate (because collecting all the data — and much of it would be weak anyway — would be a huge task) is that as long as a sitting president has a favorable rating of 45% or more (Obama has more than that), undecideds don’t split heavily one way or the other.
We may be somewhat in the dark because not in the modern era has there been two such awful candidates, and the third party choices have obvious shortcomings as well.
If Wi is really a 5 point race, I would expect Trump to lead in Ohio and Iowa and be competitive in MI and PA.
If there has been a shift, it would mean Trump would likely win Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa. If you give Clinton VA and CO, then it is 253 Clinton 230 Trump with the following out:
Pennsylvania
Florida
Nevada
In this election the firewall is PA, VA and CO. Of those 3 PA is closest.
If, IF this is a 2 – 4 point race Pennsylvania is going to be a war. But at this moment one can envision Trump putting either WI or MI into play as well.
Clinton’s favorables are tanking. I had hoped the convention would reverse her problems.
For the record I still think this is 4.5 to 6 point race.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/08/31/wapoabc-poll-hillary-dislike-hits-record-high/
Anyone? Jeb? Cruz? Huck? Christie? Kasich and Walker could possibly at this point have a better chance, but they too were awful. By “anyone,” the writer probably means that mythical guy that elites, fundies, and whites folks love. ie Saint Ronnie and even then the 1980 election wasn’t over this far in advance.
I hear what you’re saying and why, but it feels off to me in this election cycle with these four candidates. Obama’s 2012 margins in CO, FL, IA, OH, PA, and VA were thinner than his WI margin, but that was also when WI voters were angry with WalkerCo.
Need to plug in some number for traditional openness within a state to third party candidates (and whose hide any such votes will come of) and the impact of Senate races in all of these states except VA that doesn’t have one this time and ticket splitting expectations. More variable than usual and it’s possible this time around that senate races could wag the dog. Those variables add a great deal of complexity to the equation.
If it is a 4 point race with 3rd parties over 13 or so, there is potentially a ton of volatility.
Try this analogy:
It is 1968
Humphrey is Trump trying to put the GOP together
Clinton is Nixon trying to run a risk adverse defensive campaign against an unpopular opponent
Johnson/Stein are Wallace
The largest movement in the last 30 days of any race since polling began was 1968
Humphrey peeled off some Wallace voters in the north and brought home undecided Democrats.
And Humphrey came within 1 point in California of denying Nixon the White House.
Is Clinton the new Nixon in this scenario.
Plenty of similarities between Nixon and HRC, but the ’68 analogy doesn’t work. (Will get to CA later) The voting factions are somewhat alike but also quite different and they aren’t aligned in the same way. Walking through this:
The ’16 GOP nominee has Wallace voters, the ’64 GOP wackos, and the fundie voters that didn’t coalesce as a faction before then and when they did, previous non-voters joined them.
Nixon had the ’64 wackos, traditional small business and farmer and ranching Republicans. Both of those factions have shrunk since then and the remainder has split over social issues. He also had country club and wealthy elite Republicans and socially liberal and fiscally conservative professional class.
HHH had the Catholic and Jewish vote, unions (mostly blue collar) but the fissures over the Vietnam War were present (so, HHH lost some of that vote, but Wallace probably picked up most of it because racism went along with being pro-war) and Democratic machine voters, including the last gasp in Texas. Well paid unionized workers have shrunk, but the Dem machines that didn’t subsequently flip to the GOP have remained powerful.
The fundie voters didn’t coalesce as a GOP faction until 1980. This is a tough one to piece together because before the ’70s Evangelicals outside the south either didn’t vote or weren’t prevalent. By ’68 racism would have been more defining than religion.
As ’68 was still in the New Deal era, libertarians didn’t exist outside the Kochs/Birchers. Boomers weren’t a factor because few were eligible to vote. Also marijuana was far less prevalent than advertised by the media (and far less potent).
Moving those factions today:
Trump has the ’68 Wallace and a portion of ’64 GOP wacko legacy voters, fundies, the extraction industry (workers ’68 Dem and owners ’68 GOP) voters, the not so left behind small business owners, farmers, and ranchers, and the socially conservative professional class. Perhaps 50% or a bit more of older white working class men not otherwise defined.
HRC has the a majority of the socially liberal professional class (both salaried workers and owners) POC (overwhelmingly so among low wage workers), and a majority of older white women working class not otherwise defined.
Johnson is pulling the tiny libertarian true believers and other disaffected ’16 GOP voters. It’s not, at least at this point, a real faction. What’s helping Johnson/Weld is that unlike Trump and Stein, they’ve both actually served in public office. Beyond that, they’re probably not well informed and they merely loathe liberals, HRC, and Trump.
Stein is only drawing the most disaffected among liberal/Democratic voters. That percentage could go up as more undecideds conclude that voting for Stein won’t help Trump or go down if it looks like their vote will help Trump.
In ’68 Nixon beat HHH in CA by just over 3% points. A small margin for a “favorite son” and in a state that historically had leaned GOP. However, that historical ‘lean’ was based on CA GOP politicians being more progressive and less corrupt and racist than Democrats were perceived to be. By mid-century the differences between CA Democratic and Republican politicians may have been less than anywhere else in the country. Each wave of immigration changed the make-up of the CA electorate (Dem v. GOP), but less corrupt and more progressive usually won. (Taft didn’t even make it onto the ballot in 1912.) Nixon was an odd duck. Only carrying the state by 0.55% in ’60. Too corrupt and too much of a demagogue for either party, too racist for traditional Republicans and insufficiently racist for traditional immigrant Democrats from the south. Yet, as Ike’s VP he had the veneer (and actually some of the substance) of CA Republicans. His allies were real estate owners/developers, agriculture/ranching and the defense industry (all big biz in CA). Democrats had unionized workers, New Deal industries, Hollywood, and “dreamers.”
Here’s a puzzler — Nixon carried WA by 2.4% in ’60 and lost it in ’68 by 2.1. Carried CA by 0.5% in ’60 and 3.1% in ’68.
○ American Social Policy in the 1960’s and 1970’s by Jerry D. Marx, Ph.D., M.S.W., University of New Hampshire
From another source, the California paradox …
○ The Shaping of California History
Early split in our family when I was a teener: we lived in a St Louis suburb, my oldest brother was a fan of California and supported Richard Nixon in 1960, I was a JFK fan and have been a Democrat through all the political turmoil of decades. In good conscience, I cannot and will not support HRC. She lacks integrity, vision and judgement in choice of advisors. A mega divide between her and the JFK years.
I’d love to know what Trump’s unfavorable rating–and that’s what the post is about here, folks, not about how people may actually vote–would be like if he had been the target of a 25 year long propaganda campaign.
Instead of a 30-year-long fluff campaign.