Hillary Clinton Does Not Have a Six-Point Lead Over Donald Trump

Donald Trump gives the stage over to former UKIP and Brexit leader Nigel Farage during a campaign rally in Mississippi. (Photo: Getty)

For those of you who read and follow People’s Pundit Daily, particularly our election projection models, you know I am a true believer in the average of polls and aggregate data. I do not believe in “unskewing” the polls nor the practice of weighting polling results for party identification. Party identification, which is fluid, is not the same as party registration and respondents should dictate to pollsters what the party breakdown of the electorate will be, not the other way around.

That being said, the 2016 presidential election is testing my faith. First, there are too many polls and not enough pollsters. Simply put, the same firms that completely blew the 2014 midterm elections and, subsequently, the 2016 primary elections, are doubling down on being statistically stupid. Most clearly refuse to improve on their model’s assumptions and methodologies and, as a result, the aggregate polling is over the place.

National polls, for those who aren’t polling junkies, are typically thought to be a leading indicator of state polls. In 2012, it was certainly the other way around, though they inevitably coalesced. Yet, despite clear movement in most battleground states toward Trump, the national averages remain skewed by suspicious outliers. Take the polling released in the past month, for instance.

Clinton’s dominance during the month of August, which was the combined result of her convention bounce and a media barrage covering Trump’s self-inflicted wounds, was shattered with the release of a CNN Opinion Research Poll. Trump led by 2 points in the four-way race and 1 point in the fictional two-way race. The TIPP Poll, conducted for Investors Business Daily, which is one of the most accurate, highly-rated pollsters analyzed by the PPD Pollster Scorecard, had the 4-way race tied.

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Clinton also lost her roughly 6-point lead on the PPD U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll after Labor Day and was clinging to a small lead on other trackers such as Reuters, Rasmussen and YouGov. Battleground states–including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Colorado–either moved to BATTLEGROUND, LEANS TRUMP or LIKELY TRUMP on the PPD 2016 Presidential Election Projection Model.

Republicans haven’t won Maine since 1988, yet it’s currently a BATTLEGROUND with Trump poised to at least claim the Second Congressional District. Rhode Island is a 3-point race due to large-scale defections from former supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (more on that to come).

Then, national polling went dark. It was a black out.

In all of the tracking polls, including those like PPD that track the race daily, the race is either tied (YouGov) or Trump is slightly leading (Reuters, PPD). In the Rasmussen White House Watch Poll, he has a slightly larger 5-point lead. Nevertheless, this week, the national polling clearly showed movement in favor of the Republican candidate.

Yet, to Hillary’s rescue, an AP-GfK poll, which hadn’t released a poll in 10 weeks, and a McClatchy/Marist Poll, which hadn’t been out for 7 weeks, showed Mrs. Clinton with an identical 6-point lead, bucking the daily and weekly tracking polls and mirroring what appeared to be an outlier NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll. The latter repeatedly underestimated Trump’s vote share during the primary. Remember when they had Cruz +2 before South Carolina, because I do?

To be honest, I’m not sure what is going on behind the scenes anymore. Another trusted pollster I recently spoke with says he’s convinced “they are putting their thumb on the scale.” To this pollster’s credit, he’s one of only two pollsters who caught Trump’s true vote share during the primary. No honest assessment of the media coverage this election could conclude anything other than anti-Trump bias. So, maybe polling bias is the new norm, too. I don’t want to believe that, but something doesn’t jive.

Hillary Clinton does not, in fact, cannot have a 6-point national lead over Donald Trump. Nor does she have 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote, which is one of the several inaccurate assumptions these pollsters are making.

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote, yet losing Ohio. In 2012, President Obama won the Buckeye State by just over 2 points when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points (3.9%).

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote yet losing Iowa. In 2012, President Obama won the Hawkeye state by roughly 6 points when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points.

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote yet losing Florida. In 2012, President Obama won the Sunshine State by less than 1 point when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points.

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote yet losing Nevada. In 2012, President Obama won the Silver State by more than 6 points when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points.

I could go on and on, but you get my drift. If the state polling is correct, which is in line more accurate pollsters such as Emerson College, Fox News and PPD, the real state of the race suggests movement toward Trump, though electoral map challenges remain for the Republican nominee. Specifically, he needs one more big state or a combination of smaller states to cobble together 270 electoral votes.

Even if we consider and factor in what we’ve seen as a political realignment this cycle, assumptions made by some of these pollsters run contrary to our own findings and the findings of pollsters we trust the most. We poll this race daily and find both candidates have consistently struggled to consolidate their base. While we hear more about Trump’s base in the media, the problem for Clinton with former Bernie voters is actually more severe.

Considering he already endorsed Clinton at the convention, it would appear there is little room for her to grow with these voters. The reality on the campaign trail confirms our results and runs contrary to their results.

We consistently find that only around 60% of Bernie voters are certain to back Clinton, while the rest support one of the other three candidates. A significant percentage–ranging from 11% to nearly a quarter, depending on the state–are supporting Trump. While a significant number of primary voters who supported another Republican candidate are backing Clinton, it is smaller than the percentage of partisans he takes from her.

The same is true about the enthusiasm gap, which the aforementioned pollsters dispute. Trump voters consistently report a higher level of interest and enthusiasm than voters supporting the former secretary of state. A whopping two-thirds (66%) say they are “Extremely Enthusiastic” about voting for Trump in November, while roughly half (55%) say the same about voting for Clinton. Another one-fifth (20%) of Trump voters say they are “Very Enthusiastic” juxtaposed to 24% for Clinton.

I’m not saying Clinton can’t end up winning by six points–though I seriously, seriously doubt it barring something like a debate meltdown–I am saying she doesn’t have that lead right now.