Yes, the polls, they are a-tightening....
Polling Data
| Poll | Date | Sample | MoE | Trump (R) | Clinton (D) | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RCP Average | 5/13 - 5/19 | -- | -- | 43.4 | 43.2 | Trump +0.2 |
| ABC News/Wash Post | 5/16 - 5/19 | 829 RV | 3.5 | 46 | 44 | Trump +2 |
| NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl | 5/15 - 5/19 | 1000 RV | 3.1 | 43 | 46 | Clinton +3 |
| Rasmussen Reports | 5/17 - 5/18 | 1000 LV | 3.0 | 42 | 37 | Trump +5 |
| FOX News | 5/14 - 5/17 | 1021 RV | 3.0 | 45 | 42 | Trump +3 |
| CBS News/NY Times | 5/13 - 5/17 | 1109 RV | 3.0 | 41 | 47 | Clinton +6 |
....as I duly noted last week. But as I also noted, this is primarily due to Trump having ended the GOP primary campaign, freeing himself to focus on bullying and fearmongering most of the party he's hostiley taken over into submission, and on the Ugly Dutchess, while she is still having to divide her attention between Trump and The Man Who Wouldn't Leave, whose stubborn, bitterender hanging around and agitating is playing squarely to the presumptive "Republican" nominee's benefit, almost as if Trump and Sanders are in cahoots somehow. Which wouldn't seem to be a positive development for conservatism, but then Trump supporters jettisoned their principles along with their souls in favor of pyrrhic front-running a long, long time ago.
The sheer math of the latest polling numbers clearly indicate that Mrs. Clinton has fallen much more than Trump has risen. Which quite clearly suggests that a lot of Sanders-supporting Democrats and Donk-leaning independents have gravitated to the undecided or Trump-protest vote columns. For now.
Whether that trend lasts depends upon how hardcore the Bern-feelers are and remain, and how much the Democrat "establishment" feeds their rage by hamfistedly circling the proverbial wagons around Her Nib. If both sides of the Donk Civil War dig in, refuse to back down, and take it all the way to Siberia, as it were....
....a replay of the 1968 election that saw the first "Days of Rage" at the 1968 Democrat convention and eventually put Richard Nixon - another petty, lying, vindictive, leftwingnut masquerading as a Republican - into the White House will become a bona fide, viable, and even serious possibility.
And yes, by the way, it's Nixon who is getting insulted by that parallel, as Tricky Dick at least was orders of magnitude more intelligent than the pompadoured prince.
If, however, the Dems eventually re-unify as they did after the similarly bruising Obama-Hillary primary battle eight years ago and the Sandersoids "come home," then all such posts as this one will be exposed as having been rather garishly premature celebrations.
Here is the context that those odious "Trump is getting popular" missives are missing: the size of the "None Of The Above" category when survey respondents are given that option:
Here are the results of the poll, released Saturday, by the New York-based Schoen Consulting firm:
Who would you support for president?
Trump: 33%.
[Mrs.] Clinton: 33%.
Independent candidate: 20%.
Not sure: 14%.
The Schoen Consulting results mirror those released last Wednesday by Data Targeting Inc., a pollster based in Gainesville, Florida.
Who would you support for president?
Trump: 34%.
[Mrs.] Clinton: 31%.
Independent: 21%.
Not sure: 14%.
This is not some sort of "Trump surge"; it's a Hillary collapse, and more to the point, a "None Of The Above" surge. It's a rejection of both presumptive nominees, which is hardly surprising given that they are the two most loathed major party standard-bearers of the modern era.
Let's average those two polls and lump "Independent candidate" and "Not sure" under "None Of The Above" and guess which emerges the winner?
NOTA 34.5%, Trump 33.5%, Rodham 32.0%
According to the latest Gallup party-affiliation percentages, Democrats plus leaners lead Republicans plus leaners 49% to 41%, corresponding to 54.4%-45.6% of those who identified a preference. That would put 18.8% in the NOTA-Dem sub-category and 15.7% in the NOTA-GOP sub-category.
If both party's bases "come home, that produces a narrow Hillary Clinton two-party popular vote victory (50.8%-49.2%). But neither is very likely. An 80% base-support number is the most likely sustainable number for Trump (not much lower than Mitt Romney's four years ago), with the other 20% not voting at the presidential level or breaking third-party. The equivalent for Mrs. Clinton is the more variable because it is uncertain whether the level of Democrat internal division will escalate, subside, or remain roughly the same. Using the Donk worst-case scenario 1968 election template and assuming that same 25% defection rate, that produces a mirror-reversal narrow Trump two-party popular vote victory (50.8%-49.2%). Any Democrat/leaner defection percentage on par with or lower than Trump's tips the election to Herself.
And if the Democrat base does close ranks like it did after the bruising Obama-Hillary battle eight years ago, Mrs. Clinton wins in a blowout (as much as 56.3%-43.7%).
So there's your range of 2016 election possibilities, folks. 51-49 Trump on one end to 56-44 Hillary on the other. Which means pretty much what we #NeverTrumpers and now #NoneOfTheAbovers have been maintaining all along: Nominating Donald Trump as the 2016 GOP presidential nominee was and is tantamount to forfeiting the 2016 presidential election to Hillary Clinton.
Trump cannot win without significant and massive assistance from Bernie Sanders supporters - the extreme Left, in other words.
How perfectly fitting.
UPDATE: Here's a better name for the polls-tightening: "Unity" bounce.
But the Electoral College map is still Trump-brutal.
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