Year: 2016

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Hillary Clinton has picked an awful time to hit one of the rough patches that has plagued her throughout the campaign. Now with just days to go until Election Day, there’s added uncertainty about the outcome. But while she may not be on the brink of an Electoral College win the size of Barack Obama’s in 2008 or even 2012, her position as the clear frontrunner in this race endures.” Cook Political Report: “A tightening race nationally has also translated into tightening at the state level. States that were trending Trump’s way in September started to slip away from him in early October. Now, with the focus more on Clinton’s emails than on Trump’s debate performances or his Twitter spats, states like Iowa and Ohio are moving back in Trump’s direction… However, these are minor, not major adjustments to the overall Electoral College map with Clinton now at 278 (8 more votes than she needs to win) and Trump at 214 (56 short of 270).”

Delaware Coalition Against Gun Violence (DCAGV) took a look at how our state senators and representatives voted on a few relevant pieces of legislation, which are:

HB 217: Mandates that law enforcement enter ballistic data relating to violent crime into a national database. HB 325: This bill closes a loophole to our gun background check laws. The current loophole allows for guns to be given to a potential purchaser if the background check is delayed for 3 days or more. In some cases a gun is given to a person who should not be in possession of a firearm. SB 83: Among other provisions, this Act provides that any person who is prohibited from purchasing, owning, possessing, or controlling a deadly weapon because the person is subject to a Family Court protection from abuse order is so prohibited immediately upon the entry of the protection from abuse order from purchasing or otherwise obtaining, and within 24 hours of personal service of the order, from owning, possessing, or controlling any deadly weapon.

Here are the grades:

New York Times: “Now, even as Hillary Clinton contends with inflamed Democratic anxiety over renewed scrutiny of her private email server, these once-red areas — a string of states that voted twice for George W. Bush — are providing an unexpected firewall for her campaign.” “Democrats are already strongly confident of victory in three of them — Colorado, Nevada and Virginia — and believe that a fourth, North Carolina, is likely to break their way as well. Added to the party’s daunting advantage in the Electoral College, these states have impeded Mr. Trump’s path to amassing the 270 electoral votes needed to win, limiting his ability to exploit Mrs. Clinton’s late vulnerabilities and forcing him to scrounge for unlikely support in solidly Democratic places like Michigan and New Mexico.”