To all those who assured us Hillary was way way way more electable than Bernie:
Nate Silver’s 2016 Presidential Election Forecast has jumped wildly.
Odds of Donald Trump winning went from 19.7% on June 29 to 57.5% today.
1. I still think Hillary will win, and I’m voting for her. Nate Silver has gotten a lot of things wrong this year, but still… IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS CLOSE! Deservedly or not, Clinton's a sadly poor and compromised candidate. She and Bill shouldn’t have given those $250,000 speeches. The real reason Trump won the GOP nomination was the weakness of his competitors; that’s also the reason he’s in contention now.
2. On the other hand, the only reason Hillary can win is that her opponent is Donald Trump. Up to this point, at least, she’s been slightly less hated than him.
3. Ordinary voters didn’t seem to find the ridiculous GOP Convention as catastrophic as the drama critics in the pundit class did…or, more likely, they didn’t care.
4. After Donald's speech, the lead media meme, repeated in countless headers and articles, was “Trump’s Dark Vision of America.” Well, when polls show a majority of voters think the country is on the wrong track, and a huge majority think Washington is crooked, and real inflation-adjusted income for 80% of the country hasn’t risen in 20 years, and we’ve spent trillions and killed hundreds of thousands in wars we never seem to win, and the same media that scream about Trump being “dark" have drenched us 24-7 in images of terrorists massacring innocent civilians, refugee children drowning in the sea, racist cops killing Black victims and Black vets shooting down cops…maybe a lot of ordinary folks have gotten the impression that, you know, things are a little dark out there.
5. General malaise, war fatigue, economic uncertainty and social angst are precisely why an intemperate charlatan like Trump can rise in the first place. Ethnic prejudice and fear of immigrants activates in times of economic distress and dissipates in times of prosperity. The old order is failing to deliver the goods. Both here and in Europe there is a reaction, from left and right, against incompetent ruling elites who seem to function mainly to empower and enrich themselves.
6. A measure of the establishment’s desperation is the sudden spate of articles from liberal and neo-con apparatchiks speculating that Trump may actually be an agent of Vladimir Putin! (Bill Clinton got $500,000 from Russian bankers for a couple of speeches in Moscow, and a couple of million for the Clinton Foundation, but that doesn’t count.) Rolling out the Red Menace has a rich, successful history in American politics. Maybe it will take Trump down a notch.
Here’s some depressingly interesting poll data from the Washington Post:
"So it's perhaps not surprising to see Clinton's numbers take a hit. But they have been steadily getting worse for months and are now basically worse than ever before.
1) 68 percent say Clinton isn't honest and trustworthy
That's according to the CNN poll, and it's her worst number on-record. It's also up from 65 percent earlier this month and 59 percent in May. The 30 percent who see Clinton as honest and trustworthy is now well shy of the number who say the same of Trump: 43 percent. You heard that right: Trump — he of the many, many Pinocchios — now has a large lead on Clinton when it comes to honesty and trustworthiness.
The CBS poll, for what it's worth, has a similar number saying Clinton is dishonest: 67 percent.
2) Her image has never been worse
CBS showed just 31 percent have favorable views of Clinton and 56 percent have unfavorable ones. Even in Trump's worst days on the campaign trail, he has rarely dipped below a 31 percent favorable rating. Clinton has hit that number a few times, but her negative-25 net favorable rating here is tied for the worst of her campaign, according to Huffington Post Pollster.
In the CNN poll, the 39 percent who say they have a favorable view of Clinton is lower than at any point in CNN's regular polling since April 1992 — when she wasn't even first lady yet. Of course, back then, the reason just 38 percent of people liked her was because many were unfamiliar with her. At the time, 39 percent were unfavorable and 23 percent had no opinion.
Clinton's favorable rating in the CNN poll is currently 16 points net-negative. That's unprecedented in the dozens of CNN polls on her since 1992. Gallup's new numbers on Monday — 38 percent favorable and 57 percent unfavorable — are also unprecedented over the course of Clinton's political career. This also appears to be the first time ever that Clinton's image measures worse than Trump's. It does so in both polls.
3) Just 38 percent would be "proud" to have her as president
That's down from 55 percent in March 2015. Sixty percent say they would not be proud.
On this measure, she's basically on the same footing as Trump, whom 39 percent would be proud of and 59 percent wouldn't be.
4) Nearly half of Democratic primary voters still want Bernie Sanders
Clinton dispatched with Sanders and now has his endorsement, but despite 9 in 10 consistent Sanders supporters saying they'll vote Clinton in November, many of them still pine for their first love.
The CNN poll, in fact, shows 45 percent of those who voted in Democratic primaries still say they wish it was Sanders. Just 49 percent say they prefer Clinton — down from 55 percent a month ago
Salon. Monday, Jul 25, 2016
Shock poll: Nate Silver’s election forecast now has Trump winning
It isn't as simple as a post-convention bounce, FiveThirtyEight polling guru Nate Silver explains
(Credit: Fivethirtyeight.com)
It may not be a post-RNC bounce, but political analyst and statistician Nate Silver’s latest forecast of the presidential election shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton with a shocking 15 percentage point-greater chance of winning if the general election were held today.
After a parade of D-list celebrities and conservative icons yelled that the nation had been overrun by criminals in the cities and murderous undocumented immigrants in border towns, the Republican party’s presidential nominee’s current likelihood of winning stands at 57.5 percent, compared with Clinton’s 42.5 percent.
FiveThirtyEight’s “now-cast,” Silver’s model, considers more than just polling in its forecast and currently predicts the popular vote going 45.4 percent to Trump vs. 45.1 percent to Clinton, with the Electoral College giving Trump 285 votes and Clinton 252.6. This is the first time the “now-cast” forecast has been projected Trump to win.
Silver, who correctly forecast both the 2008 and 2012 elections, has Trump winning in the swing states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire:
The now-cast is super aggressive, and can overreact to small swings in the polls. But it’s useful if we want to get a snapshot of what the election looks like right now. It suggests that in an election held today, Trump would be a narrow favorite, with a 57 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.
[…]
It isn’t straightforward to measure Trump’s convention bounce because he was already gaining ground on Clinton heading into the conventions, narrowing what had been a 6- to 7-point national lead for Clinton in June into roughly a 3-point lead instead. For instance, the CNN poll shows a massive 10-percentage-point swing toward Trump, but its previous poll was taken in mid-June, at a high-water mark for Clinton. By contrast, CBS News shows Trump gaining only 1 percentage point, but its previous poll was conducted earlier this month, shortly after the controversy over Clinton’s email scandal resurfaced.
Dean Rindy is an Austin based political consultant.