Hillary Clinton’s strategy to build up an early-voting firewall may be paying off. Public Policy Polling just released its last batch of polls for this cycle, with polls from Michigan, Virginia and Colorado.
All three polls are absolutely devastating for Donald Trump. Hillary leads 50-45 in Colorado, 50-44 in Michigan, and 51-45 in Virginia. More importantly, Hillary is out to massive leads in early and absentee voting in all three states—52-41 in Colorado, 57-36 in Michigan (absentee only—Michigan doesn’t have early voting), and 63-32 in Virginia.
If this is accurate—and knowing PPP’s reputation, it probably is—Trump is in a world of trouble. Let’s let the guys at PPP spell it out for you.
Trump will be counting on a very strong performance on Election Day to have any chance at taking Michigan and Virginia, and he's probably pretty much already lost Colorado given the volume of early voting there.
Specifically, 73 percent of Colorado voters have already voted—enough for PPP to conclude that it’s all over but the shouting there.
Knowing what we know about Michigan and Virginia’s demographics, there isn’t a way forward for Trump in those states either. Even if Trump does everything right in Michigan, he will likely drown under a surge of Hillary votes in Detroit, Flint, Ann Arbor, and Lansing. Likewise, Trump could run the table in the “real Virginia” and still won’t have enough votes to overcome the likely Hillary tsunami in Northern Virginia.
This matches up with other polls showing Hillary out to massive early voting leads in other key states. Unless Trump and the RNC have a better GOTV operation than we’ve seen, we can probably breathe a little bit easier. Let’s finish it.