I think there are two big takeaways and one big point going forward that we can draw from today’s polls, apart from the obvious fact that Hillary Clinton has for now opened up a significant lead over Donald Trump.
First, Clinton got a sizable bounce out of her convention. That bounce appears not only to be persisting but actually growing. That’s a big deal. It’s still too soon to say we’re in the post-convention period. I’d say we need about a week more to be there. But historically speaking where the polls are a week or two out of the conventions tends to remain fairly stable. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to really change the game. The debates are the big exception. But for all frenzy, there have been few cases where the presidential debates have really reset the race. People say a lot that three months is a long time, that polls are only a snap shot of the race as it stands today. All true. But we’re coming up on the phase of the campaign where polls really start to matter and become much more predictive of the outcome.
With Georgia moving into the “Lean Clinton” column (yes, actually Georgia), The TPM Electoral Scoreboard now stands at Clinton 305, Trump 179, Toss-up 54. See the details here.
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This is not really a message or an argument that I imagine will be terribly relevant to a lot of TPM Readers. But I think it’s an important one to state. We’re now seeing a trickle of high profile Republicans or Republican elected officials announcing that they will not vote for Donald Trump. So far though I’m only aware of one Republican member of Congress or Governor who says they are voting for Hillary Clinton – Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY).
With all the tumult of the last few weeks, I’m trying to take some bit of a break this weekend to keep charged for the next three months. But here’s one question I’m pondering and which I haven’t seen a good answer to. When Paul Ryan and John McCain started criticizing Trump over the Khan family affair, he tried to overawe them with the threat of not endorsing them in their primaries. I doubt either particularly cared for themselves. But for the party brass that was clearly a bridge too far. Would he go to war with every member of Congress who didn’t toe the line? The bigger threat was his gratuitous insults to Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who’s in the fight of her political life and looks increasingly likely to lose.
From this morning’s speech: “Our roads and bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at taxpayer expense.”
As of this morning, The TPM Electoral Scoreboard currently stands at Clinton 318, Trump 179 and 41 electoral votes currently in the Toss-Up column. Notably, that 318 is without Ohio or Iowa which both haven’t been polled in a few weeks.
The PollTracker Avg puts the popular vote at Clinton 46.9% to Trump’s 40%.
If you haven’t already, take a look at the series The New York Times is running on corporate capture of DC’s think tank’s. I flag it not only because it’s an important, very deep-dive look at an important topic but also because it was a topic I focused a great deal of time on before I started and then just after I started TPM when I was still a full-time reporter. My interest was first piqued by what a close friend of mind called ‘deep lobbying.’
The conventional wisdom is that you don’t really know the impact of the conventions until everything settles out a week or two after the second convention. We’re coming up on that threshold. And as you can see from the trend chart going back to July 1st, this is no longer just a bounce.
At the risk of stating the obvious, a bounce is something that goes up and then comes down, at least part of the way back down. But Clinton’s trend line continues to rise.
For the first time since 1940, the Tulsa World declines to endorse the Republican nominee for President: “From Day One, the Trump campaign has brought out the worst of America, not the greatness that he promises.”