Lots of hyperventilation between the recent polls showing a bump for Trump (not unexpected, considering how low he was) and the leaks of DNC emails. We will have to see how all this plays out.
But in general consider the following.
1. They’ve gotten their bump, now is our chance.
2. Polling data basically does not include the impact of adding Kaine to the ticket, how he performed in Miami, how positive the 60 Minutes joint appearance was (particularly compared to that of the Republicans).
3. Let’s see what the mood is after on our Monday we hear from Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
So what does it look like right now?
Over at the Upshot Blog at the New York Times, we see a narrowing. It had been 74-26 Clinton, and is now narrowed to 68-32 (those are percentages of winning). But this is key: if you look at state margins, while some of those have also narrowed, they still have Clinton winning 347 Electoral Votes, with the closest states being NC 51-49, FL 55-45, OH 56-44, IA 59-41, NV 63-37, and PA 65-35. But consider what that means — If Clinton lost all the states where her percentage is <60%,she would still win the electoral college with 279 Electoral votes. And this may be as good as it gets for Trump.
Then let’s look at what Sam Wang has to say over at the Princeton Election Consortium. In this post this morning, he write
Two points is an unimpressive change. Recall that in states won by Mitt Romney (R) in 2012, Trump has been lagging by about 9 percentage points. A CBS crosstab (can’t find at the moment – perhaps a reader can help) reports that Trump’s progress was made entirely with Republicans – whose support went up by 2 points. This suggests that with the majority of reluctant Republican voters, Trump didn’t close the sale. And, of course, it remains to be seen whether his increase in support is lasting.
So Trump persuaded some Republicans to come home. I suspect with the help of Bernie and Warren, Clinton will persuade a larger chunk of Dems to come home.
Until we are through both conventions, and until we have some time for state polls to reflect the impact of what has happened, I would not hyperventilate. For any one poll, taken at one moment, there may be some impact shown, but you need to see how it is weighted demographically to properly assess it. All the evidence is that Trump will be clobbered among various minorities that together are an increasing share of the electorate, and doing worse than Romney among a significant portion of White voters. Taking those facts together, I see nothing in the polling just out to persuade me that the basic nature of the race has changed, regardless of what various pundits may put out — after all, if there is no contest, who would watch/read them?