Month: September 2016

Josh Marshall on the state of the polling race:

First, let's compare the 2012 and 2016 races. Obviously, we have the full race data set for 2012 while more than a month of 2016 is still to happen. Still the comparison is instructive. I've filtered each chart to begin in May. [Click through to TPM at the link above to see the charts]. A few things immediately jump out. First, the 2012 race is much more stable than the 2016 race. This is likely do to having four candidates, two fairly unliked candidates and a race that is at least to some degree upsetting recent voting patterns. Second, Clinton has maintained a lead at all times. The lead ranges from very small (less than a single percentage point) to fairly substantial (high single digits). (It is important to note that statistically speaking, when you are talking about an average of many polls, a lead of perhaps two percentage points is not a virtual tie.) This captures the key factors in the race. It is close by historical standards but not closer than 2012, judged by the leader's margin. Indeed, over the course of the period we're looking at the 2016 margin has usually been higher than 2012's, sometimes substantially higher. Does this mean Clinton more likely to win than Trump? Yes. Does this mean it's close? Yes. Can you just assume Clinton will win and not worry about it? No. Should you channel your anxiety into self-doubt, recrimination and drama? Please don't. Pretty much everything else seems like a matter of semantics. My own hunch is that that line separating the two candidates is likely more durable than some suspect. But that's just my own hunch.

Josh Marshall on the debate:

For Trump, the bigger problem in a debate setting is the nature of two person debates versus as many as ten on the stage at once. Answers in multi-person debates tend to be short and pointed. Time is in very short supply. Generally you have to fight to get in on a question. There can be back and forth and candidates are sometimes pressed on a given point. But that isn't the norm. Time is scarce and you can generally just hang back on a question you don't want to address. Two person debates have very different dynamics. I think the bigger liability for Trump is what we saw in the national security forum hosted a few weeks ago by NBC News. [....] [There, on a question regarding ISIS,] Trump has very little idea what he's talking about and when pressed on a clear contradiction he starts making up new nonsense to avoid addressing the question. As I said at the time: I think this exchange is pretty obvious for people in a way that transcends politics and ideology. Trump is the kid telling the teacher the dog ate his homework. Then the teacher points out he has no dog. But he's not going to apologize or come clean. He's just going to keep talking. Trump is extremely ignorant when it comes to public policy. George W. Bush had a pretty limited handle on public policy issues too. But either he or his campaign staff (likely both) had some awareness of this fact and kept his answers general and brief. Trump has no such self-awareness and generally just makes things up on the fly. That's seldom gone over well in non-Fox contexts - not just because he's ignorant but because it's usually pretty obvious he's just making things up. I do think it's possible he'll be goaded into saying something offensive or unhinged. For instance, I think it would be highly advisable for Clinton to confront Trump on birtherism - to press the point that he needs to provide some explanation and apology for why he spread this lie for six years. He's shown very little indication that he has a good answer to that question. Questions like that, shaming questions, tend to set him off.

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president,” Yahoo News reports. “The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election.” Meanwhile, “Russian intelligence agencies are trying to interfere with the U.S. presidential election, the top Democrats on the intelligence committee said,” according to NBC News. “The lawmakers, part of the so-called ‘Gang of 8,’ members of Congress who are briefed on nearly all the nation’s intelligence secrets, went much further than President Barack Obama has been willing in engaging the question of Russian hacking into American political organizations.”

Mark Cuban, who has savaged Donald Trump by suggesting the GOP nominee is not really a billionaire, was given a front row seat in next week’s first presidential debate by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, CNN reports. “Cuban has tried to publicly shame Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, regularly slamming the Republican nominee for not releasing his taxes. The attacks have been particularly effective, given Cuban’s status as a fellow billionaire and his public persona as a similarly brash businessman.” More on how Hillary is preparing for the debate, and tons of new poll numbers inside!