I don’t have a head for numbers but this is fairly frightening. I thought Hillary was more electable what’s going on?
As the presidential candidate field narrows, the number of polling participants marking undecided or not sure drops dramatically in election polls. Reuters has been the go-to resource for election sentiment, especially for head-to-head data. The most recent data confirms what many may have feared: Hillary Clinton actually loses in a head-to-head matchup against Donald Trump, while Bernie Sanders beats him easily.
EDIT: Reuters just released new 3/20 data for both candidates, which confirms the trend caught in this article.
I first caught the trend while looking at the Reuters polling data, which uses a 5-day rolling average (this helps smooth out their graphs & shows trends better). The Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump Reuters graph among looks like this:
From this data, we might come to the conclusion that Hillary wins, but by a slim 1.8% margin. Considering these polls are usually given a 3% margin of error, you could call it a virtual tie.
But then the article goes:
However, these are rolling averages (meaning a combination of several days). Visually you can already see the trend of Donald Trump narrowing the gap, but when you look at the most recent data (March 18th) without the 5 days proceeding, it shows Trump is winning against Hillary Clinton. He wins by 1.5% (37.8 to 36.3%).
And worse than that:
Let’s take a look at how Bernie Sanders fares against Trump. Again, here’s the rolling average:
The short answer is no. Bernie Sanders beats Trump by an even larger margin: 18.5%(49.9% to 31.4%)
This is big news for anyone who still believes that Clinton will do better against Trump than Bernie Sanders. If you are worried about a Donald Trump presidency, Bernie Sanders is by far your safest bet.
Can someone tell me what a rolling average is? Is this just CT? Thanks.
