There are good reasons why I advised Donald Trump to devote a disproportionate amount of attention and resources to steadying his ship in Florida and Pennsylvania: Winning those states’ combined 49 electoral votes is an absolutely imperative task for the Republican Party candidate to maintain any credible path to victory. The polls were pretty bad for Trump in Pennsylvania over the past month, and public opinion in Florida seemed to be heading south as well. If those trends hadn’t changed for weeks, the election would have been over, for all intents and purposes. But then came Trump’s long-awaited ad buy, coinciding with merry-go-round fresh Clinton Foundation Control and controversy. (It is worth mentioning that some of the best investigations into the bribery fund orgy lucrative favoritism AND something for something access to retail was carried out and published by a leftist journalist David Sirota). Add to that the more restrained Republican candidate – the “pivot” is still more or less intact – and it’s no surprise that the national race has closed up a bit, even when you factor in Reuters Agency‘ schizophrenic results. But the battleground states are the most essential. Especially the ones I mentioned. That’s why the move in Florida, which we reported on behind schedule last week, is so noteworthy. As is the latest Emerson poll data, which receives solid grade B from FiveThirtyEight pollsters’ scorecard. If these findings are to be believed, or if they are simply the beginning of a trend, the Keystone State is becoming increasingly competitive:
PENNSYLVANIA Main Results@Hillary Clinton 46%@realDonaldTrump 43%@GovGaryJohnson 7%@DrJillStein 2% photo:twitter.com/9Wzww4Ef3E
— ECPS (@EmersonPolling) August 29, 2016
Trump’s unpopularity (40/58) is only slightly worse than Hillary’s (42/55), and both are nearly identically unpopular in Ohio, where Emerson sees the race as tied at 43 percent – Hillary’s worst showing in the state from the end of July. This “Washington Examiner” David Druker offers an essential word methodological caution about these polls: They were generated using an automated system and were targeted solely at landlines, excluding many voters whose main points of contact are mobile phones and the Internet. These factors may aid explain why Emerson’s results should be considered outliers for now. But they should definitely be included in the averages, and observers will no doubt be watching closely to see if additional corroborating numbers emerge from other pollsters. By the way, Emerson also measured Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s massive 15-point lead and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey’s significant lead (+7), both of whom are ahead of Trump by double digits. I’ll leave you with FiveThirtyEight by admitting that yes, Trump has I have made some progress against Hillary on the national level:
After earlier mixed evidence, it became clear that Trump had regained the lead over Clinton. https://t.co/zAJVmbiHXH photo:twitter.com/R7dfF6rjnn
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) August 28, 2016
It’s too early for Hillary to settle into a comfortable “run out of time“a strategy, they say, that increases Trump’s chances of winning by eight points under their model. Don’t open the valves yet; she still has an 80 percent chance of winning, they say. Here’s Nate Cohn raves how Hillary seems to be far outperforming Obama in 2012 across a wide range of demographics, and yet her overall lead is still in the low single digits. Almost like she’s a corrupt liar who is universally hated by the electorate.
