one of his odds charts includes some intangibles like economic and political events, not just voter polls.

The media loves to claim that any small downward fluxuation for Hillary is a FALL and any upward tick is not news worthy.

So the question really is, "What does the trend line look like?"

And its basically flat.

But heck if I can understand it.

and patch it up. It happens almost every hour now.

last couple weeks. If you scroll down you will see a chart with Trump going up and Hillary going down, I hope this is normal.

while Hillary is running a campaign from the 1990s.

He explains it further down that page. Each state race has a probability of a Clinton or Trump win based on polling. All the charts further down support the big numbers at the top. It's pretty neat.

There is virtually no discussion of issues, it's all cult of personality.

the media ignores her. Trump talks about that fucking wall and they fall all over themselves to broadcast it far and wide.

One explanation is that Hillary's post-convention "bounce" is now over.

I'm personally amazed that the race is even remotely close.

Some people must really hate Hillary after the YEARS of conservative propaganda, baseless accusations that the Clintons murder people, etc.

Seems that the polls this past week are showing a closer race, with Hillary still in the lead. Looking forward to Hillary taking 300+ electoral votes, and Trump's sad concession speech.

Not in a million years.

But I'd love to see it. I've seen a lot of politicians I don't like (Reagan, Bush, Cruz, Helms (especially Helms), etc.), but Trump is right up there with the worst. If you've haven't seen the movie V for Vendetta you should watch it, because Trump reminds me of High Chancellor Adam Sutler.

It's September 2.

Wait until the debates, when trump looks like a child next to Clinton. It's going to be a sight to see.

i love how the media spins that trump is narrowing the deficit when he picks up a Point or two in a poll. They completely disregard the MoE and the fact that it's entirely plausible that the margins haven't changed at all, it's just a statistical anomaly.

Last edited Fri Sep 2, 2016, 06:45 PM - Edit history (1)

Nate Silver does his projections on a state by state basis. You can see this methodology played out by clicking on individual states on his main national prediction page. Especially look at the swing states he lists on that page. For each state he calculates for each candidate the probability that that candidate will win the state based on the latest polls. (For instance in Florida those probabilities of winning are 64.3% for Clinton and 35.6% for Trump as I write this and for Ohio they are 62.6% for Hilary and 37.3% for Trump.)

To calculate the probability each candidate has of winning a particular state, he first adjusts each poll for known biases and then combines all of the state's recent polls on a weighted basis - the better the poll and the more recently it is taken, the higher the weight it is given.

Once he has calculated the probabilities each candidate has of winning each state, he has the computer run randomly through the 10,000 hypothetical election results for all of the states. For instance in those runs Clinton would win Florida 64.3% of the of the time and Ohio 62.6% of those 10,000 runs. The results of those runs in various combinations are the probabilities that Clinton and Trump have of winning the electoral college vote.

As the polls tighten in the individual states, especially in the swing states, the probabilities of Hillary winning those states go down so her chances of winning the national election also go down, even if maintains a lead in all those states.

The bottom line (and this is important if you haven't been able to grasp the above due to my poor explanation) is although Hillary has maintained a lead in the polls in the swing states, her leads in those states are not as big as they used to be. Therefore her chances of winning those states has gone down, although they still remain above 50%. As her chances of winning key states went down, her chances of winning the electoral college went down as well.

Examples: Hillary chances of winning Florida have dropped from 79.9% on August 14th to 64.3% today. In Ohio her chances of winning dropped from 79.8% on August 14th to 62.6% today. This reflects the fact that since August 14th Hillary's adjusted poll lead in Florida has dropped from 7.3% to 2.6% while at the same time her lead in Ohio has dropped form 6.2% to 2.4%. (She is still winning in those states, but by not as much.)

The same thing is happening to a greater or lesser extent in other states. When all of these state statistics are combined for the 10,000 computer runs which generate the statistics for the electoral college, it isn't at all surprising that Hillary's chances of winning the Presidency have dropped from 89.2% on August 14th to 72.1% today. A good question would be, why haven't her chances fallen further? Answer: Remember that Hillary only needs to win a few of the swing states to win the election.

You'll see NYT or the Princeton predictors moving rather less

Our lead is good but smaller given the best data we have

Stepping back, it's not surprising that the huge post convention bounce we got is narrower. I wish it were otherwise. Trump won't lose without a (clumsy, racist, idiotic) fight

She has had a batch of closer polls lately.

Expect it to to get even closer because the word "emails" was in the news.

It will revert to the baseline state of the race which is a mid range Clinton lead.

Trump will never be ahead in any poll averages for more than a couple of days.

This was on Anderson Coopers 5:00 show. Her margins of victory were higher than they were as of Aug 4. It certainly calmed my concerns to hear that because she has had to deal with a lot of incoming BS in the past couple of weeks. My guess is that you should not be concerned for now. Of course, there is always another round of mortars being fired across the bough, in her direction. But for now, I'm feeling good knowing that she is leading Trump in all 8 of the Battleground states.

Quit being concerned. Trump will lose. Yes, campaign hard. Don't take it for granted. But he will be smashed hard on election day. Don't be concerned about polls. Donate. Phonebank. Canvass. And win.

My husband is ill, not sure we can do more than give money this time around. But we will vote early and encourage others to GOTV.

That says it all at this point.

is that Trump has made very small gains but Hillary has lost support.

If the polls were going to tighten that would be the best way for them to do so (for us). Trump isn't bringing in new support which might suggest he's already near his ceiling. Hopefully after the first debate people will start embracing Clinton more, once they see she is not the unlikable monster the press portrays her as.

talk shows need to make this look like a horse race (in so many words). As we all know, the media is run by sociopaths (by definition: the disorder is characterized by a disregard for the feelings of others, a lack of remorse or shame, manipulative behavior, the ability to lie in order to achieve goals). The documentary "The Corporation" shows big business for what it is. Having said that, if nothing else, I think people will have the crap scared out of them and vote! When we look at the polls state by state, Hillary's ahead in almost all of the swing states. The bottom line is revenue generated for these news stations.

I'll try to stop worrying. Maybe I should just stop looking.

I think the enthusiasm of minorities this election is way underrated. I am black, and I know how determined people are to keep trump out of office. I also know a lot of the Hispanic community. They are motivated as well. The fact that the MSM wastes time and energy speculating on whether Trump can pick up minority votes is ludicrous. I believe in my heart that we are being gaslighted. I believe this still with the underlying fear that I could be wrong, but I cannot shake my optimism about this election.