2016 Polling Thread

[pbrower2a]

Four national polls:


ARG, June 17-20

Clinton 50
Trump 41

Men: Trump 53, Clinton 39
Women: Clinton 60, Trump 30

Whites: Trump 49, Clinton 40
AA's: Clinton 95, Trump 5

http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres2016/na16-2.html
[/url]
[url=http://americanresearchgroup.com/pres2016/na16-2.html]
RVs:

Clinton 47
Trump 40

4-way

Clinton 42
Trump 36
Johnson 9
Stein 4

Likely Voters

Clinton 49
Trump 41

4-way

Clinton 44
Trump 37
Others (?)

http://www.monmouth.edu/assets/0/3221225...6e76bd.pdf

---

Clinton: 48
Trump: 42

Clinton: 42
Trump: 38
Johnson: 9
Stein: 5

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-ele...it-n595911

CNN/ORC national poll, conducted June 16-19:

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images...eneral.pdf

Clinton 47%
Trump 42%

4-way race:

Clinton 42%
Trump 38%
Johnson 9%
Stein 7%

[pbrower2a]

Virginia looks to be close to the national average in Presidential voting in November, barring something strange going on. Of course we are showing signs of having one of the most erratic elections in American history.

PPP says of Virginia, which should be fairly representative of America as a whole:



PPP's new Virginia poll, conducted entirely after Sunday's shooting in Orlando, finds broad support from voters in the state for a variety of gun control measures:

-88% of voters support background checks on all gun purchases, compared to only 8% who oppose them. That includes support from 93% of Democrats, 87% of independents, and 83% of Republicans.

-86% of voters support barring those on the Terrorist Watch list from buying guns, to only 7% who are opposed to taking that step. 89% of Democrats, 85% of Republicans, and 84% of independents support that change.

-55% of voters support banning assault weapons to only 33% opposed to such a ban. That is supported by Democrats (75/16) and independents (49/41), while Republicans (35/47) are against it.

The Presidential race in Virginia is pretty tight. Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 42-39, with Libertarian Gary Johnson at 6% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 2%. In a head to head contest Clinton's lead remains 3 points at 48/45. Clinton's benefiting from Democrats in Virginia (83/8) being more unified around her than Republicans (76/5) are around Trump. But with independents Trump's up 42/29.

A big part of that is Clinton still having some trouble getting Bernie Sanders fans to consolidate around her. Among Democrats or independents with a favorable opinion of Sanders she gets 68% to 8% for Trump, 7% for Johnson, 5% for Stein, and with 12% of voters undecided. If Clinton could get even half of those Sanders fans who are currently holding out right now to vote for her, her lead would expand from 3 points to 9.

One question that's already not close is whether Virginia would rather Barack Obama or Donald Trump was President- Obama wins out on that question 52/41, calling into question how bright of a political strategy it is for Trump to trash Obama all the time. Virginia makes another state where Trump is remarkably unpopular- only 32% of voters see him positively to 60% with a negative view.

Showing once again the impact that Trump's power of suggestion has on his fans, 18% of voters with a favorable opinion of Trump think Barack Obama might have been involved in the terrorist attack in Orlando on Monday, and another 23% of them say they aren't sure one way or another. Only 59% explicitly rule out Obama involvement. Of course to put the views of Trump fans in context, Robert E. Lee has a 65/7 favorability rating with them, compared to only 48/28 for Martin Luther King Jr. They say they have a higher opinion of Lee than King by a 44/31 spread, surely just another sign of the economic anxiety purportedly driving his support.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/...-lead.html

Prohibiting people on the Terrorist Watch List from owning firearms is a no-brainer. Any politician who can't jump on that obvious bandwagon might have some tricky explaining to do.

Although people who believe that Donald Trump is the best candidate for President are so delusional as to hold President Obama culpable for the mass-killing in a gay bar in Orlando, Florida, a significant part of them can believe something so patently absurd. But millions of people still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya -- demonstrably wrong.

Preferring Robert E. Lee to Martin Luther King clearly indicates what South one believes in.

[pbrower2a]

One entity (Morning Consult) has polled all 50 states and DC. I'm keeping its polls separate from my composite.

For what it is worth, here is the collection of Morning Consult polls of all 50 states.



margin   saturation

30+          9
15-29       7
9-14         6
5-8           5
4              4 (usual margin of error)
1-3           2
tie            white  


Useful only in the absence of other evidence. But this said, no way is Hillary Clinton winning New Mexico by a mere 3% or Delaware by a mere 5% or Donald Trump winning Idaho by a mere 11% or Oklahoma by a mere 14%. No way, also, is Hillary Clinton winning Georgia while losing North Carolina.

[pbrower2a]

Polling as of Friday night.

https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/stat...3096788993

NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist

Quote:CO: Clinton 43, Trump 35
FL: Clinton 44, Trump 37
NC: Clinton 44, Trump 38
VA: Clinton 44, Trump 35

Poll conducted from July 5-11.

Demagogue Don needs all four of these states, and he isn't getting them according to this poll. He needs to be getting well into the forties to have a chance to win these states, and he isn't doing so. Even Q shows him stuck around 40% support.

One unanswered question with these polls is how Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are doing. The 2012 Presidential race looks increasingly like a three-way race.

http://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000155-e...f97c6b0001

Florida (one more):

In a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll of 800 likely voters

Clinton 45
Trump 40
Johnson 6
Other 2
Undecided 7

White
Clinton 35
Trump 50

Latino
Clinton 53
Trump 31

Black
Clinton 80
Trump 9

Useful because Florida is, despite its far-off-center position in the USA, is a fairly-good microcosm of America.  Greenberg-Quinland-Rosner is one of the best pollsters around (see also Selzer).  

Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump






30% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 3% or less
40% -- lead with 40-49% but a margin of 4% or more
60% -- lead with 50-54%
70% -- lead with 55-59%
90% -- lead with 60% or more

Leads with less than 40% are considered TIES.

...By the way -- I suggest that we pay more attention to my polling thread on the three-way race for Clinton/Johnson/Trump. The unusually-strong Libertarian ticket may change the character of this Presidential race from the binary races to we have been accustomed the last four times.

...and the three-way polling that I prefer:



Three-way race:





Small states and districts in area: CT: D5,6;4
ME: D7,??;4  ME-01 (est) D14,??;6 ME-02 R2,??;4
NJ D9,12;4
VT D15,10,3

Clinton (D)
Trump ®
Johnson (L)

[pbrower2a]

Johnson stands to hurt Donald Trump badly in a three-way race. I would be concerned about Stein picking off votes from Clinton -- but far from as many as Johnson will take, on net, from Trump.

[pbrower2a]

One sign of the advance of senile dementia is belligerence. I see this in Donald Trump. It proves little, and such is far from enough to diagnose any disease.

[pbrower2a]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 30, 2016
INTERVIEWS: Tom Jensen 919-744-6312
IF YOU HAVE BASIC METHODOLOGICAL
QUESTIONS, PLEASE E-MAIL
information@publicpolicypolling.com,

Clinton Image Improves Following Conventions; Leads Trump by 5

Raleigh, N.C. –


PPP's new national poll, taken completely after both party's conventions, finds that Hillary Clinton emerged with a much more positive image than she had a month ago. Donald Trump meanwhile is just as unpopular as he was before the conventions. Clinton's net favorability improved by 9 points over the last month. She's still not popular, with a -6 net favorability at 45/51, but it's a good deal better than the -15 spread she had at 39/54 a month ago. The gains are particularly attributable to Democrats increasing in their enthusiasm for her, going from giving her a 76/15 rating to an 83/12 one. Trump, on the other hand, is at a -22 net favorability with 36% of voters seeing him favorably to 58 % with a negative one. That's barely changed at all from the 35/58 standing we found for him in late June.

Clinton leads the race with 46% to 41% for Trump, with Gary Johnson at 6% and Jill Stein at 2%. In a head to head just between Clinton and Trump, Clinton hits 50% and leads Trump 50-45. A month ago Clinton led 45-41 in the full field contest and 48-44 in the head to head so there hasn't been much change. But not much change is good news for Clinton. We've been writing for months that this race is shaping up pretty similarly both nationally and at the state level to the margins Barack Obama won by in 2012- not a huge landslide by any means, but a solid victory. The conventions have passed without any change to that big picture, and that leaves Clinton as the favorite going into the final three months.

My comment: At this time my assessment that the Democrats solved more problems than the Republicans did is neither verified nor denied.

[Eric the Green]

I'm glad to see the Clintons and Kaine campaigning in PA and OH, because it appears that's where the election will be decided. Trump cannot win without carrying those states.

[pbrower2a]

My new format. Leaders in the binary race should be passing 45% support by now even in swing states. My rationale: the Parties have well defined themselves -- perhaps in the case of the Republicans this year, too well. Leads with less than 45% support in a binary race should either intensify or vanish. Allowing two recent polls in states that Donald Trump is likely to win even in a 45-state Clinton landslide to stick (I doubt that those will create any controversy -- Hillary Clinton will win neither Alabama nor Oklahoma) that rarely get polled, I have found single polls from Nevada and Pennsylvania and two polls from Georgia.

Hillary Clinton has leads of 5% (PPP), 


Binary race, Hillary Clinton (D) vs. Donald Trump ®  



Leader up with

60% or more -- saturation 80%
55-59% --     saturation 70%
50-54% --     saturation 60%
46-49%, margin 5% or greater saturation 40%
46-49%, margin 4% or less saturation 20%

(the usual color applies for the partisan leader, but yellow blue to green and red to orange below  

40-45%, margin 5% or greater, saturation 40%
43-45%, margin 4% or less, saturation 20%  

I might give Gary Johnson leads a yellow color. That could also compel me to introduce a new format.

Johnson support:

16%+: 80
13-15: 70
10-12: 60
7-9: 50
4-6: 40
2-3: 30
0-1: 20
Poll w/ no Libertarian number: clear



Three-way race (so far showing the lead, the margin, and Johnson support). Anyone getting over 50% support gets numbers blanked out; 50% absolutely wins any race no matter how many are in it.  







Small states and districts in area or with shapes that allow confusion:

(none yet)


Clinton (D)
Trump ®
Johnson (L)

[pbrower2a]

from KUTV, CBS-2, Salt Lake City.

Quote:(KUTV) The Republican and Democrat national conventions are over and as the dust starts to settle, it looks like Hillary Clinton has a chance to carry Utah in the U.S. presidential election.

A new Hinckley Institute-Salt Lake Tribune poll shows the two are virtually tied with 35 percent for Donald Trump and 36 percent for Hillary Clinton. That is as close as a Democratic candidate has been to victory in more than half a century.

Clinton declined to campaign in the state during primary season and came in the spring only to raise money. Republican Mitt Romney, popular in Utah, spoke strongly against Trump. Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee fought against Trump at the Republican National Convention and said he doesn't know if he will vote for for his party's candidate, Trump.

Utah has been the most Republican state for 40 years but that could change with Trump's run toward the White House.

Utah rejecting Donald Trump in October? Such would be sweet Schadenfreude. Someone whose personal life is a veritable insult to Mormon virtues  can lose Utah.

OK. The poll apparently does not exist, according to the Washington Post. The TV station does not have this poll at its website, and the graphic is apparently a forgery. The Hinckley Institute knows nothing of this poll. This is a rehash of an outlier poll given at one time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-...snt-exist/

[The Wonkette]

(07-29-2016, 02:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: One sign of the advance of senile dementia is belligerence. I see this in Donald Trump. It proves little, and such is far from enough to diagnose any disease.

Yes, but hasn't he had this characteristic all of his life? I have many issues with the Donald, but I don't believe senile dementia is one of them.

[pbrower2a]

(08-02-2016, 11:32 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(07-29-2016, 02:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: One sign of the advance of senile dementia is belligerence. I see this in Donald Trump. It proves little, and such is far from enough to diagnose any disease.

Yes, but hasn't he had this characteristic all of his life?  I have many issues with the Donald, but I don't believe senile dementia is one of them.  

I dunno. People might have the tendency all their lives and suppress their belligerency when belligerence looks counterproductive. Losing the inhibitions against bad behavior could be a consequence of alcoholism (supposedly Donald Trump is a non-drinker) or a deterioration of the mind from organic cause.

I'm not trained in psychiatry or clinical psychology, so I cannot talk about Donald Trump in specifics. I could never diagnose senile dementia, and even as a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist I would never make a diagnosis from a distance with a living person, which even I understand is a violation of professional ethics. . I have seen it and its consequences, but someone had to tell me.

[Eric the Green]

I kind of agree with wonkette; I don't think he was quite as unhinged in his previous years as he is now; at least verbally. We had one senile president before. Some people think it worked out great, but I didn't agree.

[Eric the Green]

(08-02-2016, 06:42 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(08-02-2016, 12:52 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I kind of agree with wonkette; I don't think he was quite as unhinged in his previous years as he is now; at least verbally. We had one senile president before. Some people think it worked out great, but I didn't agree.

If you're talking about Reagan he was asymptomatic until after he retired.

Some of us thought he was quite symptomatic by 1987. He really didn't know what he was doing regarding arms for hostages, and even admitted it.

Quote:In any case, Trump is either a cynical play acting shit stirrer or does in fact have something wrong with his noggin / nervous system.

I don't know, really. Who does? It just seems like, for whatever reason, he has become crazier. He was just as exploitive and reckless at times in his business, and just as uninformed, but as far as I know his remarks were less stupid and perhaps less arrogant.

[pbrower2a]

Bash FoX News all that you want, but the polls that it uses are credible and objective.

She's up 10%.


[img] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/...lawed.html[/img]

Some side questions:

Quote:50. As you may know, the parents of a Muslim-American soldier who died while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq appeared at the Democratic Convention and the father spoke out against Donald Trump.  How familiar are you with Trump’s response to comments by the parents?

51. How do you feel about Trump’s response -- would you say it was in bounds or out of
bounds?


In bounds / Out of bounds (Don’t know)
1-2 Aug 16 19% /  69%

[ROTATE NEXT TWO QUESTIONS]
42. Do you think Hillary Clinton has the temperament to serve effectively as president?

Yes No (Don’t know)
31 Jul-2 Aug 16 64% 34%

43. Do you think Donald Trump has the temperament to serve effectively as president?

Yes No (Don’t know)
31 Jul-2 Aug 16 37% 61%

[ROTATE NEXT TWO QUESTIONS]
44. Do you think Hillary Clinton has the knowledge to serve effectively as president?

Yes No (Don’t know)
31 Jul-2 Aug 16 72% 26%

45. Do you think Donald Trump has the knowledge to serve effectively as president?

Yes No (Don’t know)
31 Jul-2 Aug 16 40% 59%

Hillary Clinton apparently has kept the winning coalition for Obama intact, which will be enough to win the Presidency.  This is when the vote begins in earnest.

Quote:Those numbers rival Barack Obama’s performance among those groups against Mitt Romney in 2012, when he won among women by 11 points (55-44 percent), blacks by 87 (93-6 percent), Hispanics by 44 (71-27 percent), and voters under 30 by 23 (60-37 percent).

Trump is the choice among whites by 10 points (49-39 percent), men by 5 (45-40 percent), white evangelical Christians by 50 (69-19 percent), and whites without a college degree by 16 (52-36 percent).

Right now he’s underperforming his 2012 counterpart. Romney won whites by 20 points (59-39 percent), men by 7 (52-45 percent), white evangelicals by 57 (78-21 percent), and whites without a degree by 26 (62-36 percent).
Trump bests Clinton among veterans by 53-39 percent.

Twelve percent of Republicans back Clinton. That’s more than double the number of Democrats supporting Trump (five percent). And while Clinton garners more support among Democrats (87 percent) than Trump does among Republicans (78 percent), she trails among independents. They go for the Republican by 41-33 percent. In 2012, independents went for Romney by 50-45 percent.

Consistent with a collapse by Donald Trump, if not a definitive expression of such. The negative ads practically write themselves, and those could be devastating.

[Eric the Green]

(08-03-2016, 07:56 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: A mass of Russian troops is shown pouring into Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. The screen splits, bringing in another vignette of PLA troops coursing into Thailand alternating with scenes of warfare in the South China Sea. The screen splits again, showing massive soup lines here in the US. The screen makes one final split, showing Trump uttering some sort of insane statement. Then, the entire set of 4 vignettes gets replaced by a flash and subsequent image of a massive thermonuclear explosion.

A dystopian movie should be made fast! Before November!

"Dr. Grumplove, or how I learned to love the end of the world as we know it"

I won't be satisfied that the nation is beginning to return to sanity until Hillary is up by at least 20 points.

Newsmax headline was "Fox poll shock!" If anything, I'm "shocked" that her lead has ever gone less than 10%.

[pbrower2a]

Quote:I expect lots of polls to pop up tomorrow. They usually do on Wednesday.

They did, but not the ones (Marist, PPP, and Quinnipiac) that I expected. They might not be my favorites, but they have some value. Two of the states are critical for Republicans, and the only good news for them is that they have no chance of losing or failing to pick up a Senate seat in Michigan. There simply is no Senate race involving Michigan this year.

Michigan, Glengariff, Detroit News:

Clinton 41 - Trump 32 - Johnson 8 - Stein 3


 I see no binary matchup. Today's map understates Trump's problems with Michigan. I'm using the the four-way poll of Michigan, so a poll showing a binary matchup in Michigan should supplant this one instead of being averaged.    The GOP is having trouble with southwestern Michigan, usually a safe haven for Republicans in the House. Gerrymandering in an effort to dilute Democratic votes in House races may backfire this year.

*******************


WBUR-TV (New Hampshire Public Television), MassInc

7/29 thru 8/1

Clinton: 47
Trump: 32
Johnson: 8
Stein: 3

Clinton:51
Trump: 34

629 LV

Also, Hassan now leads Ayotte by 50-40.

http://www.wbur.org/politicker/2016/08/0...shire-poll

*************
Pennsylvania -- Franklin and Marshall College:

Four-way:

Clinton 49
Trump  34
Johnson 7
Stein 3

Two-way:
Clinton 49 - Trump 38...

Katie McGinley seems to have a slight edge, if well within the margin of error, against incumbent Republican Senator Pat Toomey. If Donald Trump really cared about the Republican majority in the US Senate, then he would stay away from such states as Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Senator Toomey will have to win re-election on his own in what is beginning to look like a disastrous year for Republicans in the Presidential race.   
This is not my favorite pollster, and I really have to average this one with the pollby PPP.  
 


Enough said.
*******************


WBUR-TV (New Hampshire Public Television), MassInc

7/29 thru 8/1

Clinton: 47
Trump: 32
Johnson: 8
Stein: 3

Clinton:51
Trump: 34

629 LV

Also, Hassan now leads Ayotte by 50-40.

http://www.wbur.org/politicker/2016/08/0...shire-poll

*************
Pennsylvania -- Franklin and Marshall College:

Four-way:

Clinton 49
Trump  34
Johnson 7
Stein 3

Two-way:
Clinton 49 - Trump 38...

Katie McGinley seems to have a slight edge, if well within the margin of error, against incumbent Republican Senator Pat Toomey. If Donald Trump really cared about the Republican majority in the US Senate, then he would stay away from such states as Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Senator Toomey will have to win re-election on his own in what is beginning to look like a disastrous year for Republicans in the Presidential race.   
This is not my favorite pollster, and I really have to average this one with the poll by PPP.

Addenda: Kentucky, Harper Polling (Republican pollster) -- Trump up 13, but nothing says how he is up 13. Most likely something like 54-41.

FLORIDA, Suffolk University

Clinton 43
Trump 39
Johnson 4
Stein 3

Head to Head
Clinton 48
Trump 42

http://www.suffolk.edu/documents/SUPRC/8...ginals.pdf



Binary race, Hillary Clinton (D) vs. Donald Trump ®  



Leader up with

60% or more -- saturation 80%
55-59% --     saturation 70%
50-54% --     saturation 60%
46-49%, margin 5% or greater saturation 40%
46-49%, margin 4% or less saturation 20%

(the usual color applies for the partisan leader, but yellow blue to green and red to orange below  

40-45%, margin 5% or greater, saturation 40%
43-45%, margin 4% or less, saturation 20%  

I might give Gary Johnson leads a yellow color. That could also compel me to introduce a new format.


Three-way race, and so far I have no idea how I can change this to be more effective: On second thought, I will simply start over with the three-way race. I have the old polls on another thread anyway.



Johnson support:

16%+: 80
13-15: 70
10-12: 60
7-9: 50
4-6: 40
2-3: 30
0-1: 20
Poll w/ no Libertarian number: clear








Small states and districts in area or with shapes that allow confusion:

FL D4/4;4
NH D15/8,4

Clinton (D)
Trump ®
Johnson (L)

[playwrite]

Wow, Clinton is killing it -

Trump trounced by Clinton in latest round of polls

Quote:The new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, released Thursday, shows Clinton with a nine-point lead over the New York businessman.
Another survey, from McClatchy-Marist, puts Clinton’s lead at 15 points. That poll was also released Thursday. Clinton led by just three points in the same poll last month.
Still another poll, released Wednesday by Fox News, gave Clinton a 10-point lead.
Trump can take comfort in a key part of the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll: Voters still give him an edge on the economy, with 46% saying he’d do the best on economic matters and 42% favoring Clinton. Yet Clinton is catching up. In June, she faced a 10-point deficit on the same question.

I think we got an economic contraction due out there somewhere, but we're just a little more than 94 days out to the election.
Since the data rolls in about a month behind, the economy has to contract in about 60 days to have any impact on the election.  I think the odds of that are pretty low.  And as noted here, if the economy picks up even a tad, it is going to greatly undermine a major reason for the Trump's candidacy -

Quote:Should Trump be howling about the ‘bad’ economy?

...The election is 95 days away, and it’s pretty easy to reckon roughly what the data are going to look like as America heads off to cote. And it’s maybe not a picture Trump will want to focus voters’ attention on, especially after the much better-than-expected 255,000 July gain in jobs that the Labor Department reported Friday morning.
First, unemployment may well be pushing toward 4.5% by the October jobs report that hits the Friday before the election. It’s 4.9% now, holding steady from last month despite the big job gain. But the gains of the last two month are three times the 85,000 that Moody’s Analytics says are needed to keep unemployment steady.
So, one of two things has to happen if job growth sustains its pace or even comes close: Unemployment will fall sharply, or the GOP will deprived of one of its derpiest arguments — that falling workforce participation since 2007 reflects lingering worker despair that doesn’t show up in consumer confidence stats, car sales or housing sales.


Second, lots of indicators that real people focus on are doing much better than the relatively abstract growth of gross domestic product. Economic models that predict this election are split between the approach of Yale’s Ray Fair, whose model predicts a Trump win because it bases its prediction largely on how many quarters see annualized growth of more than 3.2%, and a newer model from Moody’s that focuses on consumer-friendly metrics like gas prices, housing appreciation and real income growth.


Regular gas costs $2.12 a gallon nationwide, down from $4.06 in 2008. (Bernie Bros won’t admit it, but fracking did that). Worse for a GOP-will-fix-the-economy strategy is that gas prices will fall after Labor Day — they always do, an average of 16 cents a gallon in the last three Octobers, when additives designed to prevent summer air pollution are removed. Gas may not crack $2 everywhere, but it’ll be cheap.
Housing prices have risen about 5% in the last year, and more than a third since 2012, according to the Case-Shiller Index. And real disposable personal income has risen 2.4% in the last year, Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi noted in explaining the ADP numbers Wednesday.

So how unhappy will voters really be about the economy?

Putting the inputs together, Moody’s model says Clinton grabs 326 electoral votes, 56 more than needed to win. Moody’s model got every state right in 2012 and 2008, said Dan White, the economist who runs the model. Fair’s GDP-focused model predicted President Mitt Romney.

Now, let’s talk about the GDP number.

Yes, first-half growth was terrible — just 1% annualized, less than half last year’s pace — but it was terrible in ways that may not translate directly into voter unrest.


Consumer spending actually rose more than 4% in the second quarter — a pace not unlike the good-times late 1980s. The first-half problem was business confidence. Companies are shrinking inventories, and equipment investment dropped at a 3.5% annual pace in the second quarter.


Business’ lack of confidence isn’t about Clinton — it’s about Trump. Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, the 2010 GOP candidate for California governor, said as much in endorsing Clinton this week.


Or you can believe Internet dude billionaire Mark Cuban, who asks, “Is there a bigger jagoff in the world than Donald Trump?” Or Warren Buffett, who says a monkey throwing darts at stock listings delivers better results. Or $40 billion man Mike Bloomberg, who reduced Bill Clinton to did-he-say-that gasping for breath with the bon mot, “Let’s elect a sane, competent person.”


Think those folks will be on the news in October blaming weak investment on Barack Obama rather than Fear of Trump?


Pinning hopes for a Trump resurgence on a third-quarter reprise of slow-to-no growth is also a lot like the mistake that Mitt Romney made in 2012: All year long, he made the argument that Obama couldn’t be re-elected because unemployment was still above 8%. The benefit of the argument was its simplicity: Its downfall was that the jobless rate hit 7.8% a month before the election, an outcome easy to see in January.
The lesson of Romney is, don’t base your political strategy on one number you don’t control. In the likely event that gas is cheap this fall, that real median incomes are basically at Web-bubble peaks and employment is near-full, and even GDP growth comes in about 3%-ish for the quarter (the Atlanta Fed’s influential GDPNow tracking estimate is now 3.7%), a Trump yell-about-the-economy plan will reduce Clinton’s strategists to — yes — howls of laughter.

What's cool about those howls of laughter to come is that the economy will be doing well and we'll all be sighing some relief for dodging the bullet of electing a proto-facist who sucks up to Tsar Putin.  Awesome Fall in the making!

[pbrower2a]

I just saw a credible poll in which Hillary Clinton takes a lead... in Georgia.

Aren't the Beatles great? It's beginning to feel like 1964 again!

Here's my projection of what the map will look like if Hillary Clinton is barely winning Georgia.


Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump



I can't say who wins Utah after Donald Trump has bungled the usual Republican support -- a write-in campaign for Mitt Romney?

Texas goes D before any of the states of the arc of states (LA, AR, TN, KY, WV) that Bill Clinton won twice that Obama got clobbered in twice. If educated white suburbanites in Greater Atlanta are going to Clinton in Texas, they are doing so in Texas, too. But I can't assure anyone that Republicans will win in the High Plains states.

[playwrite]

(08-05-2016, 01:28 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I just saw a credible poll in which Hillary Clinton takes a lead... in Georgia.

Aren't the Beatles great? It's beginning to feel like 1964 again!

Here's my projection of what the map will look like if Hillary Clinton is barely winning Georgia.

Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump



I can't say who wins Utah after Donald Trump has bungled the usual Republican support -- a write-in campaign for Mitt Romney?

Texas goes D before any of the states of the arc of states (LA, AR, TN, KY, WV) that Bill Clinton won twice that Obama got clobbered in twice. If educated white suburbanites in Greater Atlanta are going to Clinton in Texas, they are doing so in Texas, too. But I can't assure anyone that Republicans will win in the High Plains states.

Lovely map (I still wish we could switch the colors so as not to give me a near heart attack when I first open it!).

I think after Texas, we'll crack the codes in Montana and Louisiana - likely in the early 2020s.  Hope I'm around to see it.