RealClearPolitics posts daily updates in an interactive chart (Click image to see the race develop)
Donald Trump’s connection to voters, and support from them, certainly surprised the GOP establishment this year, which had the choice of more than a dozen presidential candidates, all party patriots, who had played their role, participated in the system, bided their time and now pressed to make the leap to the big time.
With unabashed bluntness, he jumped in the race, told American voters he would be the best for them by making “America great again,” and captured the nomination by the old-fashioned method of getting the most votes.
But that shouldn’t have mattered to Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic Party nominee, whose behemoth political machine and power base have been built over decades, who has a former president (her husband) and a sitting president on her side, who has polished her international connections as secretary of state, her power base as a senator from the powerful New York state and her influence by taking on issues such as health care while her husband was president.
So why are polls not showing a looming landslide for Clinton? In fact, why are they showing that the battle is a real horse race?
One daily tracking poll, done by the Los Angeles Times, even showed as of Tuesday, Trump was ahead.
Indeed, an overview of polls reveals a Clinton margin of maybe three or four or five points currently. Often the results are within, or at least close to, the margin of error. And there are months to go before the election.
Trump has been closing the gap, even leading by some assessments, since Clinton got the traditional boost that followed her hugely orchestrated national convention affirmation of her candidacy.
All of this means that the race is anything but decided, even though television pundits regularly leave the impression that Trump may as well go on vacation now. In fact, Politico reported back in May when Trump was taking control of the GOP race that pundits were completely unconvinced of his legitimacy.
“Long before Donald Trump descended the grand escalator at Trump Tower to declare his candidacy …. conservative pundits and nonpartisan clairvoyants alike had laughed off the possibility of the real-estate mogul turned reality TV star ascending to the party’s pinnacle, joining the ranks of Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln,” Nick Gass wrote at Politico.
Analyst Bill Kristol at the time said he expected Trump not “to be an issue,” because Trump wouldn’t be the nominee and Jacob Weisberg wrote for Slate, “The best-case scenario for the GOP would be Trump facing facts and backing out of the primary before the Cleveland convention in mid-July.”
Just days ago, Fox show host Shepard Smith said on social media, “A new poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 10 points nationally as the two candidates trade racially charged accusations.”
Given the facts of the 2016 election and national climate, under which a vast majority of Americans believe their country, under Obama and with Clinton in an executive role, has been and continues to be moving in the wrong direction, why does the media continues to pound on the idea that a Clinton landslide is inevitable?
And if that message continues through November, will that have an impact on voters who turn out to the polling places, or even whether they turn out?
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline blog noted the diminishing gap and noted that Clinton’s negatives, Benghazi, her email scandal, the multiple ethical issues surrounding her relationship with the Clinton Foundation, and more, have been dragging her down.
“Concerns over Hillary’s corruption are thus revived and/or intensified,” he wrote.
“For another, Trump is working hard to reinvent himself as a kinder, gentler blowhard. His outreach to Hispanics, via a revised stance of illegal immigration, and to African-Americans may be helping with the electorate in general.
“It’s not, I assume, that Trump is winning fans. But it may be that, for some voters, he’s crossing the line between blanket unacceptability and reluctant acceptance given the unpalatable and corrupt alternative,” he said.
He cited the results of Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight that estimated Clinton’s national lead, on one particular day, at 6.5 percentage points.
That’s down from a margin of 8.5 points just a few days earlier.
“What do polls from swing states show? Silver says that last week they were ‘all over the place.’ But today comes good news for Trump from three big states: Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan,” the analysis said.
Mirengoff continued, “The LA Times has consistently found this race to be closer than other national surveys.”
The charts show each time Clinton’s lead grows, it soon falters and falls, while Trump’s grows.
It also breaks down the trends, asking, “Who would you vote for?” which resulted in the 45.1 to 42.3 lead for Trump, as well as “Who do you think will win?” which gave Clinton a 54-40 lead.
The results can’t necessarily be predicted from history, analysts note.
Back in 2000, both Al Gore and George W. Bush got six-point bounces from their conventions. They eventually ended up in a tie so close that the Supreme Court essentially cast the deciding vote, ruling to shut down yet another recount in Florida.
NBC reported this year no bump for Trump from the GOP convention, and CNN said Clinton took away a 12-point boost from the Democrat convention.
David Byler at Real Clear Politics said those periods – around the conventions – are the “most tumultuous periods in general election polling.”
After, the “polls tend to stabilize and start to give a better sense of which candidate is likely to win the White House.”
So what are Americans seeing?
Leada Gore at AL.com reported on Tuesday that a Monmouth University poll showed Trump surging. Clinton was up by seven points in the latest, “a smaller margin than the Democratic Party presidential nominee enjoyed after her party’s national convention.
“The margin has narrowed since her post-convention bounce, but Clinton is holding onto an underlying advantage over Trump among key voting blocs,” claimed Patrick Murray, the chief of the polling institute that did the work.
His results showed Clinton’s support among Democrats was at 85 percent, down from 92 percent earlier. Trump was backed by 78 percent of the GOP, unchanged from earlier.
He pointed out that 51 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton and 57 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
More than one in three have a negative opinion of both.
“The number of voters who cannot bring themselves to voice a positive opinion of either presidential nominee is more than three times higher than in any other election in recent memory. This is unprecedented,” Murray said.
But UPI reported this week Clinton “retaking” her lead, 49 to 46.
Trump had been ahead earlier in the week, essentially wiping out the double-digit convention bound Clinton got.
In fact, the New York Daily News cited polling results in concluding, “Clinton’s month-long post-convention bounce could be coming to an end.”
Some of the early polling didn’t even include Trump, as an image from Business Insider reveals.
The fact that Clinton is not light-years ahead calls into question her ability to close the deal on the Oval Office, since she essentially started preparing for her bid for the presidency decades back.
She worked to accumulate power through her husband Bill’s political career, in Arkansas and then in Washington. There was her management of the failed health-care remake during Bill’s tenure, her work in the U.S. Senate, her world-touring duties for State.
But she’s not been able to keep on the message of her campaign, more changes in the mold of Obama’s updates to America, because of scandals.
She tried to silence questions about her behavior regarding the Benghazi terror attack by demanding, of a congressional committee, “what difference does it make?” And she’s assured the American people there was no wrongdoing in her use of a private email server while in office, even though the FBI said that was “extremely careless.”
In fact, about the only time she’s stubbed her toe was in 2008 when upstart Barack Obama swept onto the scene and by virtue of his being the first black nominee, surprised her and forced her to bide her time.
Maybe there’s another way to look at the battle: Count the cars.
Autolist.com on Tuesday told WND that its own just-released poll showed Clinton with a narrow, within the margin of error, 40-38 percent over Trump “among current vehicle owners.”
The organization said the most common car for a Clinton supporter was a Honda Civic and the most common car for a Trump supporter was a Ford F-150. Also, Clinton supporters are 30 percent more likely to buy a hybrid and Trump voters are 17 percent more like to look at horsepower and torque when buying a vehicle.
“As the survey shows, the November presidential race is yet to be decided among the vehicle owner population, but the buying preferences of the committed voters of the two different candidates are as different as the candidates themselves,” the organization reported.
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