On Monday, the Princeton Election Consortium got its 10 millionth view since it became a WordPress site in 2008. Traffic in July 2016 was over 50 times larger than July 2012. Thank you, both old and new readers!
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The Presidential cake is baking. Hillary Clinton’s lead over Donald Trump has increased in national polls to around 7%. Since January, the Clinton-over-Trump national margin has been 4.7 ± 2.3 % (average ± SD). The corresponding SD for January-August 2012, a re-election year, is 1.4%. Before that, Wlezien and Erikson’s data on Presidential campaigns from 1952 to 2008 show higher values for SD in all years, as high as 11.0% (1964). So 2016 is a very stable year so far. As much as 2012, it appears that voter attitudes are extremely well set. This fits with the fact that even after making increasingly incendiary statements, Trump’s support is still around 40%.
Clinton’s advantage in the Electoral College is smaller, as evidenced by a Meta-Margin of 3.7%, which is defined as how much current state poll margins would have to move in order to create an electoral tie. 3.7% may not sound like much, but Clinton’s Meta-Margin has not gone outside the 2.5%-4.5% range since May, when our calculation for 2016 began. All in all, measured in terms of public opinion, 2016 is a contender for the most stable Presidential race since World War II. Of course, we still have nearly three months for movement to occur.
A focus on downticket races is in the air. [Read more →]
