I thought it worth taking a look this morning, before either national or state polls taken entirely after the debate, or even better, beginning today, where there would have been at least a day before the impact of the debate began to change the results
I decided to use the figures available from the 2016 Election forecasts at Upshot at the NY Times looking at it two ways — first their state by state figures, then what they have aggregating state by state predictions combining as well 7 other predictors, including Sam Wang, Larry Sabato, Nate Silver’s 538, and Daily Kos.
At the moment I looked, Upshot’s overall probability was 70% for Clinton.
When I looked at what they had for the aggregate, looking only at states where one or the other candidate is drawing 85% or better (with one state being 73% from 538 on our side, the safe electoral votes were
Clinton 209
Trump 165
with 17 states for Clinton (including DC) and 13 for Trump.
So now, let’s look at a bit more detail using just the percentages from Upshot.
On the Democratic side:
90% or better 15 states w/ 195 Electoral votes
80-89 4 23 cumulative 218
70-79 4 55 273
50-59 2 35 308
in case you are interested, the last two are FL at 58% and NV at 54%
On Republican side:
90% 0r better 20 155
80-89 3 25 180
79-79 1 (AZ) 11 191
69-69 1 (IA) 6 197
51-59 2 33 230
and the last two are OH at 62% and NC at 59%.
Again, as has been clear all along — there is NO path for Trump without Florida. Clinton could lose both FL and NV, as well as IA and OH, and even the 2nd CD in ME and would still win with 272 electoral votes.
David Plouffe was on with Halpern and Heilman last night. He said that he thought the most likely Obama 2012 states to flip would be IA and OH, and that is reflected in the data above. But when he considers where the polling is now compared to 2012, and that includes the internal polling for campaigns, and recognizing the impact of the ground game, data analytics, and demographic changes, he still expects Clinton to win both of those states.
In my own mind, I think only IA and ME CD-02 have any real chances of flipping, and regardless of current data think NC is probably slightly more likely to flip our way than is OH and probably even slightly more than IA. Last polling data I heard from ME CD-02 Trump was up by 14, so that could be the most likely, but we’ll see.
Of course, we have no idea how personally negative Trump will decide — say at the urging of Giuliani — to get in the next, town-hall style debate. I ultimately think that does not matter for several reasons. First, Trump has NO EXPERIENCE in a real town-hall setting, and second, it is VERY DIFFERENT being rude to or not answering the question of an ordinary voter than it is of a moderator, and that will be especially true if the ordinary voter is female. It actually may give Clinton a chance to show her ability to empathize and connect far better than the format we saw on Monday.
The moderators will have to decide which questions to allow. It is possible that emails will come up again. I seriously doubt the kind of question Trump was hinting about would be directly asked, and if he tries to bring it up, I think the results from him would be very negative.
In the meantime, the next event is the VP debate, with a (NOT Latina) Filipino moderator. I expect there to be some question far more direct on immigration related issues, and I would also not be surprised to see questions about possible disagreements between the VP and Presidential candidates on each side. Thus Kaine might be challenged directly on TPP, for which he has been a stronger supporter than Clinton. Pence could, after recent remarks, be challenged on the science of climate change.
Returning for a moment to David Plouffe. He said of Florida and NC that he would far prefer to be Clinton than Trump right now. In NC, that is possibly an artifact of the in-state issues and how McCrory is running behind Cooper: it is a case where Clinton could possibly benefit from a higher turnout because of interest in the in-state races. Against that, we still do not yet know the total impact of the violence in Charlotte, and how that could affect Democrats negatively, although I suspect probably not as much as some Trump supporters might want.
Plouffe also described Pennsylvania as the White Whale for Republicans. Yes, it is true that the trade issue is salient for large chunks of the state. But he talked plain math. If Clinton comes out of Philadelphia and the three collar counties of Bucks, Montgomery and Delaware (and I used to live in the last) with a margin of 500,000, there are simply not enough votes in the rest of the state to make up that margin. The keys to getting a margin like that are first maximizing African-American turnout in the city, and then what happens with white, educated women in the suburbs. Trump’s performance on Monday and his doubling down yesterday on Miss Universe are not going to help him with that demographic. The “Miss Housekeeping” denigration of the woman’s Latina heritage will also hurt him with African-Americans, particularly the women who drive the votes in that demographic, because denigrating anyone reminds many African-Americans how they are subject to the same or worse.
I remain quietly confident of the electoral vote outcome. My prediction of 348, matching Larry Sabato, could be a bit high: we could lose Iowa, and we may well lose ME CD-02, but I remain as of now confident about the other 2012 Obama states and NC.
Oh, and as of yesterday I was starting to see a positive Clinton ad in rotation on MS-NBC here in Virginia. I hope we see more of that.
Peace?
