In our analysis of the 2016 electoral map last week, we traced the most likely path for Donald Trump to victory, based on virtually all available data: Namely, hold on to all the states Romney won, then flip four more states into the “red” column: Iowa/Nevada, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania (listed in order of difficulty). As more information comes in, that strategy seems reasonable. New CBS News/YouGov poll results from Iowa and Ohio show a very close and fairly tight race, respectively:
Clinton extends lead over Trump in Ohio, Iowa still close https://t.co/y9rscwyhLa photo:twitter.com/QUStIRSajv
— YouGovUS (@YouGovUS) August 21, 2016
In each case, the Republican Senate candidates are far ahead of Trump; both Chuck Grassley and Rob Portman are leading their Democratic opponents by seven points. Interestingly, potentially significant percentage Trump-skeptical voters in Ohio say a heartfelt apology from the Republican candidate for some of his least appealing behavior could make them reconsider voting for him. That could explain last try by his modern guardians to prevent him from going off the rails, I like this. For what it’s worth, fresh monmouth polls from the Buckeye State reflects YouGov data from Ohio:
New study in Ohio (Monmouth)
Clinton 43%
39% for Trump
Johnson 10%
Stein <1%#OHsenRob Portman (right): 48%
Ted Strickland (O): 40%— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 22, 2016
So the state of the race in this key battleground remains virtually unchanged: Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by about five pointsbut he didn’t reject it. And incumbent Senator Rob Portman is far superior to the man who will sit at the top of the ticket in November (the same vigorous can be observed in Marco Rubio in Florida). Election data guru Nate Silver notes that national polls currently it got a little bit tighterbut this effect has not yet reached the most vital fluctuating states:
Trump did slightly better, National polls suggest the race will be more consistent with Clinton leading by 5 or 6 percentage points, rather than the 7 or 8 percentage points she had in early August. But state polls have not followed suit and continue to show Clinton’s largest lead of the campaign. Trump did well in Iowa and Nevada, but his polling in other swing states was frail. Overall, Trump is up slightly in our projections: He has a 15 percent chance of winning the Electoral College in our poll-only model, down from a low of 11 percent a week ago. And he’s up 25 percent in polls, down from a low of 21 percent. But the evidence is so conflicting that I don’t think we can rule out more support for Trump. or that his situation has not improved at all.
I should also caution Trump fans to be wary of the only national poll that shows him taking the lead. Los Angeles Times/Tracking Civil Registry Office guts show the GOP winning nearly 40 percent of Latinos, attracting an even larger percentage of other nonwhite voters, and winning over Millennials. Those things… aren’t going to happen. In any case, as we’ve detailed, Pennsylvania is a metric to watch. Trump has to win this one, especially since Colorado and Virginia are off the board:
Clinton campaign has no plans to run ads in Virginia or Colorado before Election Day https://t.co/9zfXiOwUd8 photo: twitter.com/Q3258Wh7aD
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 22, 2016
Fun fact: Trump’s co-chair in one of Colorado’s most vital counties is 12 year venerable. The Clinton campaign may be understandably confident in these two states, but that doesn’t mean it’s sitting idle. In response to Trump’s belated but welcome TV spending in the first general election, Hillary’s team announced Total ad buys worth $80 million in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina and parts of Nebraska. It doubles its a huge advantage in this category. But notice well that despite its stubbornly solid lead in Pennsylvania, he still plays and spends money there. Why? New party registration data could provide a clue and possibly strengthen the case for why Trump should press full pressure in this state:
Hillary Clinton is still comfortably ahead by an average of 6 points in the Real Clear Politics national polling average, and encouraging registration trends alone won’t be enough to lend a hand Trump win must-win states like Pennsylvania, where he’s trailing by an average of 9 points in recent polls. Meanwhile, Republicans are losing ground in the heavily Latino Western battlegrounds of Colorado, Arizona and Nevada, where Democrats have raised their voter registration status in recent months. But the registration numbers in battleground states in the East and Midwest are a infrequent bit of good news for Republicans bracing for a potential November massacre. In Pennsylvania — where the Democratic registration advantage has fallen by a fifth since the 2012 election to 915,000 voters — more than 85,000 former Democrats have become Republicans this yearalmost three times more than the number of voters who chose the opposite option.
Our friend Ed Morrisseyauthor of an in-depth analysis of the elections Transition to red, the reasons why the loan in this case is due to the combination of long-term RNC field investments (which Trump largely neglected), and the candidate’s appeal to the working class in some parts of the state. One key question is whether these party flippers are modern converts or mostly registered Democrats who have voted Republican for years. I’ll leave you with each campaign’s latest ad, and nugget from the file “alternate universe”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqpQ4neS68g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UqwQCB48dA
Monmouth Poll: If Kasich Were Republican Candidate, He’d Lead Hillary By… 24 Points In Ohio photo: twitter.com/Akima6N6lo
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 22, 2016
