It's 21 days to the election, and 6 days till early voting starts in Texas. I keep a running average of the top seven polling aggregators and election pundits and update it once a day or so. It's been pretty boring for the last 8 or 9 days as there has been almost no change. No so any longer.
I posted a diary this morning about how after 8 days with the average polling data showing Hillary's national lead stuck between 5.9% and 6.0% (in polls showing a 4-way race of likely voters), a bunch of new polls in the last two days has that number finally beginning to rise. It was 6.0 last night, 6.3 this morning and now stands at 6.6 points. After 8 days of no movement, to suddenly see it moving more than half a point in less than 24 hours shows that something big is happening. Poll averages don't move fast, so this sort of jump is eye-opening. It seems to indicate that the rise will continue for some time. Some of the 4-way polls recently have shown double digit leads, but they have been balanced by other polls that show a smaller lead. If it turns out that double digits is the new norm, then the lead shown in the poll averages will continue to rise.
Hillary's campaign is also making a major ad buy in Texas, which shows that they think it's in play. (Texas will be in Hillary's column when her national lead reaches +13.1)
Her odds of victory, also steady at 94% for more than a week, this morning was 95.5%, now is 96.2%. There were several new national polls out yesterday and today that seem good but not stellar, but they are pushing older polls off the polling average list and they are actually big gains compared to the earlier polls by the same pollsters. Rasmussen/Pulse Opinion Research, USC Dornsife/LA Times, and several of others. Then the Monmouth University poll was released at noon today showing a 12 point lead (in the 4-way race).
So, if you’ve been concerned that the polls have not been reflecting a big Trump Drop since October 7th, this looks like it could be finally starting. If this is the Dam Breaking, then the polls might begin to change very rapidly. Once public opinion reaches a critical breaking point, then it seems to spread virally. Some Trump supporters can't take being proved wrong over and over again and humiliated and teased by main stream media, social media, and in person. They realize that they are in a shrinking minority and just suddenly give up. It feeds off itself. Hillary really could rack up a landslide victory (defined as winning Texas).
Other data:
Total 3rd Party support is down to 8.9%, and undecideds are at 6.2%, both dropping very slowly.
Projection for final results C=49.8, T=43.2, O=7.0
Texas at -6.4 (down from -15 right before the first debate)
FL and NV over +4
IA and Maine’s 2nd district are once again in the Blue for the first time in a few weeks.
Odds of taking the Senate are ticking upward once again at KOS and 538
There is one final consideration... The effects of enthusiasm, ground game and GOP infighting are not likely to show up in polls. So, if those factors are working in Hillary's favor (and nearly everyone thinks they are), then she may out-perform her polls in election day by some amount. How much? Let's discuss that in the comments. I figure a minimum of 2 points and no more than 5 points.
And, the best news of all, I have a Trump Piñata for the Debate Party. I am going to fill it with Skittles and Tic-Tacs later today.
About the Spreadsheet Simulator:
It's a Spreadsheet that uses iterative summations, and the NORMSDIST() and RAND() functions to do U.S. Presidential election simulations based on state polling data. If anyone wants a copy of it, feel free to let me know (ken@indianoakstables.com) and I'll email it to anybody that asks. I've had a lot of fun and success with it for the last 8 years. I average state and national polling data and expert opinion from a number of sources in every state and turn it all into 53 percentage chances of a Democratic victory in the upcoming General Election in each state, D.C., and two odd congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska. Then randomly simulate several thousand elections and come up with a percentage chance of winning 270 or more Electoral College Votes in November.
I also include in the simulation a "systemic error" in all polling that will raise or lower all of the polling in every state by a random amount. This takes into account the possibility of things like: Trump's supporters not fitting typical polling categories and being dramatically under-sampled by typical polling techniques; and/or Hillary's ground game being so overwhelmingly better than Trump's that her actual numbers on election day will out perform her polling numbers. The most likely outcome of this factor is a zero or near-zero bump in the poll numbers one way of another, with a bump of 1, 2 or 3 points being reasonably possible, and bumps of 7, 8 or even 9 points being possible, but highly unlikely. I establish the value spread of the systematic error empirically, using data from many elections in the past 20 years.
I don't get too fancy and try to add in a ton of factors for how far we are from the election, demographic changes from the last election, second guessing the pollsters, etc. As such, this calculation does not represent Hillary's chance of winning in November, it represents her chances of winning if the election were held tomorrow (assuming it has the most current data), or, more-accurately, this would be her chance of winning if the poll numbers on November 7th were the same as these). In that sense, it is similar to the 538 "now-cast" using polling data only. Thus, it may or may not be very accurate right now, but it will inevitably become more and more accurate the closer we get to election day. There are a number of factors that converge to increase it's accuracy as we approach election day. As examples: each day there is less time for people to change their minds, the number of undecided voters will continue to decrease, there is less time for new developments and news items to influence the opinions of voters, the number and accuracy of the publicly available polling data will continue to increase, and early voting will begin to lock in votes even before we reach election day. So, by the time we reach election eve, you can be pretty sure this sort of predictor will be about as accurate as possible.
Notes on the spreadsheet:
- Points shown are percentage points difference in expected vote share, or "point spreads".
- A 10 point spread might indicated an expected outcome of 50% for Clinton, 40% for Trump and 10% for "Others", or 46% Clinton, 36% Trump, etc.
- Points are positive for a Dem. lead and negative for a Rep. lead.
- Wherever possible, I use data from polls showing "likely voters" and a 4 way race including Clinton, Trump, Johnson and Stein.
- "EP" is data from www.electionprojection.com/...
- "538" is data from projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...
- "2012 +X.X" are actual results from the 2012 Presidential election adjusted to eliminate Candidate or Party bias in the Nationwide vote. Each State's vote spread has been adjusted by equal percentages to reflect an even 50/50 national vote in 2012, then the current 2016 nation-wide average poll spread is added to each state's normalized spread.
- "270" is data from www.270towin.com/...
- "NYT" is data from www.nytimes.com/...
- "HP" is data from elections.huffingtonpost.com/...
- "RCP" is data from www.realclearpolitics.com/...
- "EV" is data from www.electoral-vote.com
- "AVG" is an average of the estimated point spreads of the 8 data sources.
- The nationwide popular poll spread used to adjust the 2012 results is an average of the national poll spread from the same seven data sources above.
- I normalize the 2012 election results for HI and UT equally to try to factor out the "home-team" effect of them being candidate's home states.
- Blank spaces in the data matrix indicates there is no available data (usually in states with little or no polling).
- Point spreads are converted into percentage chances of electoral victory in a given state using a Cumulative Distribution Function.
- Percentage Chances of electoral outcome are all expressed as chances for a Dem victory.
- When I post a copy of this spreadsheet the data is as up-to date as possible, but some of the data sources update their numbers several times a day, so it is possible that some of the numbers in the data input area may be out-of date in the 30 minutes it takes for me to post it.