We have another premium national phone poll (NYT/CBS) this morning showing a very tight race between Clinton and Trump. In a head to head, it’s Clinton 46%, Trump 44%. When third party candidates are added they both drop to a tie at 42%. Two things that jump out to me aside from the near tie at the top are these points. One is that this is first Times/CBS poll with a likely voter screen. Among registered voters, it’s Clinton 46%, Trump 41%. Now that doesn’t mean it’s really a five point spread. But it does suggest that assuming these likely voter screens are accurate, that the race has always been closer than the polls suggested.
The other point is about the third party candidates. We now have more than enough evidence to say that the third party candidates are disproportionately hurting Clinton. Virtually every poll shows this. What’s more, those defectors from the two-party contest skew dramatically toward young voters. Indeed, the second point is the answer to the first: the defections are concentrated in a key pillar of the Democratic coalition. For Democrats in this day and age that should be where Democrats draw a lot of their votes. All the data suggests that young voters are almost universally anti-Trump. I’ve seen more than one poll showing Trump actually running fourth among voters in their twenties. But this key pillar of the Democratic coalition of the last decade is fragmenting to third party candidates. And not just Jill Stein. Not even mainly.
Many young conservatives see Trump as archaic and race-tinged at a minimum. They won’t support him. But they’re still right leaning voters and they’re going to Gary Johnson. But there aren’t that many of them. Lots of others are at least not conservative but they’re also choosing Johnson, at least for now. Johnson is actually extremely right wing, though generally indifferent to the culture war stuff. But so far he’s been able to present himself as a quirky guy who smokes weed.
I would caution people against drawing too much from polls taken over a period of time when Clinton had a bad news cycle followed by a health scare and a number of days when she’s been literally invisible. That’s unquestionably going to at least demoralize her supporters and shake free some loosely committed voters. That doesn’t mean it’s not ‘real’. We’ve seen more than enough information from polls taken from late last week until now showing a very different electorate and very different mood from previous weeks. But that shift, driven by a sudden turn of events, can also be ephemeral. We don’t know.
But these three interwoven issues: differential turnout, third party candidates and youth defections to third party candidates look like more enduring dynamics that will still be there even if Clinton’s numbers bounce back a bit after a week back on the trail. Somewhat like LePage in Maine (a soberingly good analogy) nothing in the polls suggests Trump can win a popular vote majority. But what does seem possible is that sufficient fragmentation of the Democratic coalition could allow him to win with say 44% of the vote.
