DONALD J. TRUMP ELECTED 45TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

The media, academic, pop-culture and Democratic establishment condescened to Trump from the start. America rebuffed that establishment.

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Why I see a strong chance for a Trump win in Pennsylvania or Michigan

It all comes down to what the early vote in Florida and North Carolina tells us about Pennsylvania and Michigan

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Photos: 1 | 2 | 3

Most accurate pollster of the last three elections predicts a 2-point Trump win

Trump leads by 2 points in the IBD/TIPP poll

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Trump will not lose ground over Comey's announcement, may gain in MI and PA

Trump called for voters to "deliver justice" after Comey's announcement. This plays to Trump's strengthsPhoto

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Does the early vote in Nevada really spell Trump's doom in that state?

We have conflicting evidence: polling suggests Trump wins, early vote seems to suggest the opposite, or does it?

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Why early voting gives Democrats an artificial late bump in pre-election polling

Because Democrats stress early voting so heavily, they get a small bump in the polls as some unlikely voters become certain voters in polling

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The unprecedented overwhelming media bias has distorted the polls, hiding Trump's strength

The actual poll mean over the last two months has been disguised by a constant media attack on Trump

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Nate Silver and other "data journalists" have to face reality . . . it's not science

Also, no college department should carry the name Political Science

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The reasons many polls are understating Trump's support

Sample bias and the shy Trump voter

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Trump tied nationally and trending up, Hillary bleeding enthusiasm rapidly

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We are about to see Trump fire on all cylinders and likely win the election

We have good evidence to conclude that Donald Trump will win this election

COMMENTS

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COMMENTS

An incumbent, or someone filling the place of one like Hillary Clinton, should be above 45.5% in polls if that incumbent is going to win. That Trump is so close to her, her shortfall of 4.5 percent from the critical fifty percent safe zone for incumbents, and an enthusiasm gap of historic levels in the favor of her opponent, indicates that her candidacy is waning and that she is headed for likely defeat.

National - Clinton +1.5, Clinton 45.5, Trump 44.0

Battleground States - Clinton +1.4%

Trump is running about the same in the battleground states, the more relevant polls, where he trails by 1.4%. Trump needs to gain 1.4% in those states or the poll error in Clinton's favor must be 1.4% to render the race a tossup. In Brexit, the average of polls had an error of 6%. It is notable that national and state polls are coming together now. This indicates, as has been apparent, that a number of national pollsters have been padding Hillary's leads. This isn't hyperbole. It has been obvious because of the difference between bellwether state and national polls.

TRUMP GAINS 10 POINTS IN 5 DAYS BEFORE THE FBI REOPENED PROBE

COMMENTS | Some allege "poll tampering"

We have not seen a shift this sharp since 1980. This shift is NOT the result of polling fewer Democrats.

Reagan's shift was unprecedented,

Trump seems to be matching it in the ABC polls

The big Hillary lead never existed

Now that dominant liberal media has impacted expectations for the election in favor of Hillary, they risk telling the truth

Citizens' expectations of who will win is best indicator & media knows it

Who voters expect will win represents the best indicator of who will actually win, according to The Hill's Andreas Graffe. Certainly he is not alone in this assessment. Having studied polling for years, I surmise that this idea holds the status of a truism among pollsters. Of course expectations have a dominating influence on who actually wins.

Expectations matter so much because voter turnout matters enormously. Essentially pollsters know how most people will vote if they turn out. The problem? They don't know who will actually come out and vote.

The liberal media and NeverTrumpers have attempted to instill the expectation that Hillary will win for months so they can impact voter turnout. Usually expectations are impacted most effectively by authors and commentators writing and speaking with the assumption that Hillary will win, almost as if to assert anything contrary represents a clearly uninformed statement. They attempt to make those who disagree with them seem ignorant of the zeitgeist and out of touch bumpkins.

We've all seen this, and while it enrages conservatives, it works on the lesser informed casual observer. When Monica Crowly dared to suggest that Trump can still win last night, Megyn Kelly looked bemused and quickly turned to Democrat Bill Burton, doubtfully questioning if Trump could chip away at Hillary's lead enough to win, and Bill gave her what she wanted saying, "this race is cooked."

Wink wink Hillary

Two Alternate Universes

Newt had just made the argument to Megyn in a widely publicized confrontation that two alternative universes exist, one where the race is over and one that questions the pollsters' assumption that Hillary can reproduce a 2012 huge minority and millennial turnout. Megyn clearly likes the traditional pollsters' universe more, where it is clearly absurd to consider the possibility that one of the two major candidates who is within five points has any chance of winning. Yay democracy!

On this point, Newt has a good argument. On the very same day, the two following sentences appeared in polling stories about the presidential election polls by major and respected pollsters.

USA Today on 10/26: "If her lead holds up until the results are tallied on Nov. 8 — no sure thing — Clinton would carry the White House by the widest margin in the popular vote of any candidate since Ronald Reagan's 49-state landslide in 1984."

Fox News on 10/26: "With less than two weeks to go, the race for the White House has narrowed as Hillary Clinton now has a three-point advantage over Donald Trump. That’s within the margin of error of the national Fox News Poll of likely voters."

Nothing really happened to make all the polls shift at once, except that we passed the twenty-one day until the election mark. These shifts in the polls indicate that now the pollsters know they are being graded so it's time to get the polls right.

RCP chart reflecting the pollsters' universal shift from their inflated Clinton leads

The simple fact is that the media polls, if one does not carefully ferret out and give the proper weight to polls designed to suppress the Republican vote, will give a false picture of the election right up until three weeks before the election. This is a political strategy designed to prop up Democrats during the early vote period and make everyone think the election is cooked, as Bill Burton suggested last night.

Short-Circuiting Trump's Strategy

The assumption and constant proclaiming that the election is over is an attempt to short-circuit Trump's basic strategy. Trump wins in negotiations by imposing pressure on this opponents. The Art of the Deal makes clear that one must be willing to walk away at any point, so nothing is more integral to Trump's basic strategy than brinkmanship.

The brink in this analogy represents a choice, where we go one of two directions. The media wants to avert voters' eyes away from the brink by making them think Trump has no chance, that there is no choice, just go back to sleep. So when Megyn says it's over, she is really saying she wants you to believe it's over so you won't look at the brink.

It's not over, and the media knows it

When enough battleground states for Trump to reach 265 electoral votes are within a point or two in the poll averages, the race is not over. Trump can win in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania too. We need to let this election play out.

The media's constant attempt to tell you it's over demonstrates perhaps better than anything that the race is not over.

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COMMENTS

Debunking the national polls that COMPLETELY CONTRADICT state polling (AP, ABC, USA Today)

If you include enough Democrats in your sample, Hillary will always win, and why 2012 is not the new floor for Democratic turnout

We've got some bad national polls this time around

First, it is true that the party ID question in polling is not an actual report of the real party distribution in a voting group. It represents what people currently want to associate with, not how they are registered. The reason it's a good way to analyze the credibility of a poll, however, is that exit polls use the same method to determine party distribution. I am not comparing apples to oranges by looking at the party distribution in phone/Internet polls and comparing them to exit polls.

The exit polls represent the only data of party distribution we ever receive. The exit polls are not actual hard voter data; they are just polls like the ones we are doing here except that they derive from people who actually turn out and vote, but they are, nonetheless, just polls. We want the party ID in a phone/Internet poll to match the exit polls because that means it will be more accurate.

In truth, Democrats do outnumber Republicans in this country and they will probably outnumber them in the election. Of course the real question is by how much? The AP poll assumed a +12 Democratic voter turnout. If this happened, no Republican would win any national election. So let us dispense with that absurd poll.

The ABC partisan assumption of a +9 Democrat vote is also too high. Again, if Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost ten percent, that leaves the GOP with precious little hope of winning any national election, and that's just not the makeup of our nation right now. With enthusiasm for each candidate at least being a draw and Democrats having less of a tendency to turn out in general, that +9 Democrat advantage will likely not materialize.

These kind of misleading polls really strike at their credibility as pollsters. They seem to want the big Hillary lead, probably to throw off the poll averages and suppress Republican voter turnout. I write this only because there are good methodological reasons to use different voter turnout models. It's just bad poll modeling. I believe they are actually sacrificing credibility when everyone is looking to game the system, and yes, I know this is a bold thing to assert. They are transparently embracing bad polling methods and reach an incredible result, so you tell me why.

But the real question, will it work? I have my doubts. I think this kind of thing actually can hurt Democrats because Republicans and Republican leaners get their news from alternative media. Democrats are more likely to hear it because they listen to mainstream media sources. Hearing a poll like this could actually give a voter who wants Hillary to win, but may not actually want to go vote, an excuse to go to the movies rather than vote.

Hillary Clinton: Ignore the polls "because we’ve got to turn people out”

So now for the USA Today/Suffolk distribution of 38% Democrat, 32% Republican and 24% Independent. That number looks familiar . . . oh right, it matches the 2012 partisan distribution exactly. I can see that assumption possibly making sense. If Democrats were filling arenas and minorities and young people were going to turn out in historic numbers like they have never turned out before, then I could buy it. That's what happened in 2012. Pollsters missed that in 2012 and they are making up for that mistake by assuming it almost across the board now. That is except for the pollsters that didn't miss it, namely the IBD/TIPP and LA Times polls, both of which got the distribution right in 2012. They are showing a tie race now, so perhaps we ought to take a lesson, but don't tell that to Larry Sabato who just loves the assumption that the 2012 turnout model will repeat itself.

Fox News also assumed this turnout model, assuming that Democrats would have a +7 advantage. Hillary's lead was only three percent in the Fox poll, however, so we can assume the margins of error are kicking in. The best practice here would be to average the two results with a similar turnout model, so +3 Clinton and +9 Clinton turns into +6 Clinton. That makes more sense to me. Let's assume for the sake of this article that Fox and USA Today both came to a +6 for Clinton, because essentially they should have but the margins of error threw them in different directions.

To arrive at a +6 for Clinton you assume a +6 advantage in turnout for Clinton. Funny how that works. The problem is that assuming a +6 advantage for Democrats requires you to assume that Hillary can duplicate the mega turnout that Obama brought out in 2012. On the contrary, I think we should assume that that Democrat turnout will be down around its minimum because people are bummed out by this election and many are tuning it out. That's a real bad cocktail for Democrats to swallow because their voters are prone to staying home unless they are super enthusiastic.

This assumption ignores Trump's strategy of driving down Hilary's turnout. He is intentionally firebombing her to get the soft voters to quit going to Facebook for a while to avoid the politics and instead start some Netflix marathons. There is evidence this is working.

Left-wing media is dangerously undermining democracy in 2016

Reuters just pointed out that young voters are doing just that, tuning out the election because of its negative tone.

Looking at Party ID in the sample is enough to prove a bad poll

There are far more ways than bad party ID assumptions to reach a desired result in any poll, but particularly a national one. Pollsters report the regions they call to, but not the particular types of locations, rural verse urban. If they make more calls to urban areas, the Independents and Republicans will more likely lean Democrat.

Does this happen? I suspect that it does. Much was made in conservative media of an email from the 2008 Clinton campaign that appeared to request oversampling for the purpose of maximizing impact on the "media polls." While Politifact labeled this just a request for an oversample of minority groups for the purpose of getting a clear picture of what is going on within a demographic group that is inadequately represented in the normal sample, it could have been more than that. Politifact didn't account for the impacting media polls part of the email. But that's beside the point really. One need not prove this kind of poll rigging to undermine a poll's credibility.

It's quite tempting to speculate that pollsters might yield to their partisan leanings from time to time and call more urban areas in their national polling to find more liberal Republicans and Independents. Of course that can and likely has happened. But we don't have evidence for that, so we can't really conclude that it happened here and we don't need to.

It's enough for Trump to know that pollsters, including the Fox poll that showed a +3 Clinton lead, are probably assuming too big of an advantage for Hillary when they assume 2012 turnout will repeat. Romney did not attempt to drive down turnout among Democrats like Trump is doing. Hillary has enough problems on her own generating enthusiasm. When Trump slams her like it's his job every day when her negatives are already astronomical, it stands to reason that he is probably succeeding in driving her turnout down.

At the same time, Trump world is populated by "centipedes" who possess resilient, in fact invincible, enthusiasm for the Donald. While centipedes are a feature of the_donald subreddit, the same high energy level of support present there extends to all reaches of Trump world. Enthusiasm is in fact infectious. While it may not yield the same level of enthusiasm in a passionate Trump supporter's wife, children or friend, it will probably result in the not so passionate potential Trump voter showing up at the polls because their Trump supporter dad, husband or friend has asked them about it eleven times.

So this dynamic I just described may end up in a Democratic turnout advantage of 2% or 3%. How does Donald make up the rest? This is where the new and unaccounted for voter makes the difference. The biggest reason the IBD/TIPP, LA Times and Rasmussen polls are showing Trump tied while the more traditional polls are showing a Hillary lead is because the traditional polls make it harder to reach likely voter status. The IBD/TIPP poll and LA Times/Daybreak poll essentially just take your word for it that you are a likely voter. They have successfully predicted the last two elections better than any other pollster, so to argue with this assumption, Chris Stirewalt, Larry Sabato, Nate Silver, you have to discount real election results.

If in fact the more traditional pollsters are reaching Trump's new voter base but excluding them because they did not vote in previous elections, a typical screening question in the older parts of the industry, their polls would be biased toward Clinton. This voter turnout assumption is used widely in most of the polls, which is why you can't trust the poll averages this time around. If you average a bunch of garbage stats, you are going to get a garbage average.

In summary, the old polling is showing Clinton up six when they assume a 2012 redux voter turnout model. In truth, I think that number should be at most Dem +2 or +3 assuming that Trump is not drawing new voters, which he almost certainly is. The final result will come down to how much Trump can drive down Hillary's turnout and bring out his army of brand new voters. I think the odds of this finishing within three points nationally are a virtual certainty. Who wins, nobody knows yet and that's the truth.

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Bloomberg Florida poll and Remington Research polls show just how close this race is

Trump only needs a small shift. Endless media narrative that race is over is just wrong.

The daily drumbeat of corporate media telling us that this race is over had an impact last week. Trump started to dip in the polls as we saw him drop behind in the IBD and LA Times/Daybreak polls. Those have been his stalwart polls, showing him leading when the others would not. But that has reversed and Trump is back on top in the LA Times/Daybreak and holding steady in the IBD/TIPP.

All along I have been writing that this is a close race. Those national polls can really only tell you if it's a blowout or a close race. The good national polls are showing that it's a pretty close race, within five points.

If a national poll is showing it at six points or more, that's just not a credible finding right now. Obama defeated McCain by seven and that was after the collapse of our economy and the housing crisis. We are not going to see that kind of margin this election.

Megyn Kelly and her ilk are convinced that the Fox News poll and the other live caller polls that are assuming a 2012 extremely high minority voter turnout are right. They are definitely wrong! It's not even worth your time considering. This race is within three or four points for sure. We know this because the state polls in the bellwether states are showing that this is a close race, and you can take that to the bank. The state polls are just better polls for a variety of reasons.

There is just no good reason to assume a high turnout like we had in 2012. We see now that Reuters/Ipsos is showing that young voters are starting to tune out the election because of its negative tone. This is a very bad sign for Clinton.

Left-wing media is dangerously undermining democracy in 2016

This morning a Bloomberg poll, certainly not a poll that makes favorable assumptions about his turnout prospects, shows Trump ahead in Florida.

Perhaps Remington Research Group is picking up on this trend of younger voters to tune out the election. Whatever the reason, Remington Research, a pollster that fivethirtyeight.com rates among the highest, is finding the races in the states to be very competitive.

The pollster found Trump ahead in Nevada, Ohio and North Carolina. They found Trump tied in Florida and only trailing by two in Colorado and three in Pennsylvania. If this pollster weren't rated so well on fivethirtyeight it would be easy to dismiss these as outliers. But because it is such a highly rated pollster by a website that leans left, these results represent something to consider. The samples were all around 1500 voters. They paint a picture of a race Trump can win fairly easily and it would not be a shock. By these numbers, it looks more like a 50/50 race right now. Follow my account on Twitter for daily updates on the election! 

Three of the top eight national polls in 2012 now show the race a toss up

The UPI/CVoter poll now shows a closer race after showing Hillary up by five last week

The IBD/TIPP poll and the LA Times/Daybreak poll have received a lot of coverage for showing the race a toss-up. They receive coverage because they were among the top four most accurate polls in 2012 out of dozens of nationwide polls.

Now the eighth most accurate poll from 2012 is showing this race a tossup. The UPI/CVoter poll now shows it a three-point race, with Clinton at 49% and Trump at 46%. This is within the poll's margin of error.

Notably, this poll does not include third-party candidates. When polls include them, it usually favors Trump. So this poll may actually indicate a dead-heat or a Trump lead if third-party candidates were included.

The accuracy ratings from the 2012 elections can be found on fivethirtyeight.com. Follow my account on Twitter for daily updates on the election! 

Where is this race, really? Trump is behind, but not by much. Here's why . . . 

Here is the basic formula for proper analysis as I see it. Races where the incumbent has not solidified somewhere close to fifty percent often break late in the challenger's direction. As you can see in the formula, Trump has plenty of sources from which to draw to break through. MSM is trying to tell you that the race isn't close, but it is in the states. They are also telling you that unproven allegations from women are all that matter, but that isn't correct either. Google trends consistently shows Wikileaks, Hillary quid pro quo, Project Veritas, FBI related topics and other negative Clinton stories in the top twenty.

My projection is designed to limit the impact of outlier polls because of this imprecision. Unfortunately, polls with extreme results often get reported breathlessly by the media despite their detachment from reality, like the two polls to the right, which I have heard about constantly. Boo! Dishonest!

EXTREME RESULTS

Monmouth, 726 Likely Voters, 12-Point Clinton lead

NBC/WSJ, 908 Likely Voters, 11-point lead for Clinton

How do we know these national polls are not very useful?

The bellwether state polls have consistently reflected the national popular vote where it counts, in the actual vote. So shouldn't we look to the polls in those states to tell us where the nation is going? Consider Ohio and Florida.

Ref's Projection: Clinton +0.9%

Clinton 44.3, Trump 43.4

Ref's Projection: Clinton +3.0%

Clinton 45.9, Trump 42.9

20,000,000 Floridians, 1 Electoral Jurisdiction

Florida's population is 6.4% of the nation's population. It has far fewer political dynamics to understand, so it's easier to poll than the nation at large.

Florida has a long history of reflecting the national popular vote. See chart to the right. Perhaps we should look to the small lead Clinton has in Florida and understand that this is a close race.

REUTERS/IPSOS shows slightly bigger leads for Clinton, but does not reflect a large national lead

CNN showed us a battleground state race consistent with a 3 or 4 point national lead for Hillary

My battleground state breakdown

Trump has a very good chance of winning 265 electoral votes by winning the following states, FL, NC, OH, IA, AZ and NV. His problem comes in that he needs to add one more state from the following list. CO, NH, WI, MI, NM, PA or ME.

MUST WIN STATES: He leads in Iowa and Arizona. He is within a point in Ohio and North Carolina. He trails by three points in Florida and Nevada. These are not bad numbers for Trump considering the disastrous two weeks he has had. He could turn these around with a good debate performance, some media focus on Hillary's problems or both.

HE NEEDS TO WIN ONE OF THESE SEVEN: His chances in Colorado, Wisconsin and Michigan are probably not very good. He can still win New Hampshire where he trails by 4.5%, and he has shown an ability to make Pennsylvania close, where he trails by 5.8%. New Mexico, if it votes in large numbers for Johnson, could be a Hail Mary pass for Trump. Trump has also made it close in Maine, but he's pretty far behind there now. So there's a very good chance it could all come down to New Hampshire where I think his chances are better than most people think. It's a small state where he can equal Hillary's spending. He also plays well there culturally as a northeastern rebel.

Ref's Battleground Index

In the Ref's average of all battlegrounds, Clinton leads by 2.6 points New Hampshire was added to the index as it has become more competitive.

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The best poll in 2012 consistently shows Trump leading or tied

If this poll is right again, the pollsters need to consider abandoning their current likely voter screens

The LA Times/Daybreak poll has consistently shown Trump ahead or tied. Looking at the poll's tracking chart, one can see that Hillary has trailed Trump throughout, except for the period during her convention.

Of course this poll, considering that it is showing good results for Trump, is criticized by the New York Times's Nate Cohn. He argues that the combination of weighting small demographic categories more heavily, and the misfortune of including a young black man who is supporting Trump, results in double-digit support for Trump among black voters, thus throwing off the entire poll in favor of Trump.

The poll's creators would argue that while a smaller demographic group's may have an outsized impact on one day's results, the impact becomes negligible throughout the entire week's sample.

Is it true? Does that multiplication of one young black man's vote render the poll useless this time around? Probably not. The poll's generators point out that the point of the poll is to determine the level of certainty of voters' plans to actually vote and the intensity of the support for a candidate, as opposed to simply asking preference, like most polls.

The poll asks the participants, who are the same people each week, what the percent chance is that they will vote for a candidate. The poll opts for that method rather than asking if the person is definitely going to vote, might vote or will not vote, like most surveys. I would argue that the percentage approach allows for incorporation of more voter variables, and therefore may yield greater accuracy.

Daily Oct. Surprise tracker 

See the full results here

The following unique characteristics reveal why this poll is reaching a different result and may be capturing the hidden Trump vote. This poll uses only Internet polling, so the bias that depresses the Trump vote when talking to a live pollster is eliminated. The poll includes voters who did not vote in previous elections, again, a factor that may be picking up voters for Trump that other polls are missing.

Participants have a week to answer the poll, so those who work at odd hours or are unavailable during normal calling hours can be reached. Last, even those without Internet access can participate in the poll because the pollster provides that randomly selected individual with a computer and Internet access for the duration of the poll. This gives this poll an advantage over other Internet pollsters like SurveyMonkey and CVoter, who each show a lead for Hillary.

The poll seems to have bridged some gaps that traditional pollsters have not handled sufficiently. But in the end, as with all polls, it really comes down to the assumptions pollsters make about turnout. As many have heard, a pollster provided his data to four other pollsters, and four out of five of those pollsters analyzing the same data arrived at a different result, ranging from +4 Clinton to +1 for Trump. Most pollsters in America are using similar assumptions and Trump is down nationally by 3.6 and in the battleground states by 1.5. If those assumptions are off a little bit, Trump may well be ahead even today, as happened in the Brexit polling.

Ultimately we won't know until election day if this poll was accurate in 2016. We do know, however, that this poll was an outlier in 2012 right to the end, but ultimately got the final vote almost exactly right, estimating a 3.8% win for Obama where he actually received a 3.9 % win. It's hard to argue with that result. For those who want to dismiss this poll's results, just remember that many did the same in 2012 and ended up very wrong.

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Rasmussen Reports: TRUMP HOLDS THE LEAD

Trump trailed by seven in this poll just four days ago

For the second straight day, Trump leads Hillary Clinton by two points in the Rasmussen Reports three-day tracking poll, receiving 43% to Clinton's 41%.

Trump steadily narrowed the deficit from seven points, to five, four and has now taken the lead and held it for a second day. See the poll here.

The LA Times tracking poll shows the two candidates in a dead heat. Aside from those two polls, most national polls show a lead for Hillary.

It is important to remember that pollsters are making assumptions about turnout that impact their poll numbers. More pollsters are assuming that Democrats will have an equal or better turnout than they did in 2012. That is a risky assumption, but it's driving this poll lead for Hillary in the other national polls.

Daily Oct. Surprise tracker 

See the full results here

Another factor in analyzing the usefulness of national polls is the impact of the national media dog pile on Trump. Take the Fox News poll for example. The Fox poll shows Trump trailing by seven points nationally at the same time that Marist poll finds Trump leading by one in Ohio and trailing by four in North Carolina. Those two states have functioned as bellwethers for some time, especially Ohio.

Why would the national poll vary so strongly from the bellwethers? I suspect that national polls tend to reflect the media dog pile more so than the battleground states where Trump is simultaneously putting out his message, counteracting the impact of that national coverage. It is important to remember that it is the battleground states that matter, not the national number.

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The NBC/WSJ poll released on Monday, with its high margin of error of 4.6%, looks like a poll intended to reach a certain result. The eleven-point margin is nowhere close to accurate if the point of the poll is to determine where the popular vote is right now. If the poll is intended to show that Republicans were disgusted by Trump's words on a tape eleven years ago over the weekend when the tape ran wall-to-wall, it achieved that.

This kind of poll, often provided to us by the NBC/WSJ unit, serves to throw off poll averages. The poll fails all three prongs of the test and will be weighted down in the averages. If I am wrong and other polls reflect this radical shift, I will remove the weight. Somehow I don't think that will happen. If the poll fails only two prongs of the test, incidentally, no weight would be applied.

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Foul Called on NBC/WSJ Poll Penalty: 0.5 weight applied in poll averages. It will count only half as much as other polls.

National Polls

FAILED: Other national polls +2.5 Clinton, NBC/WSJ poll +11 Clinton. Well outside the five-point acceptable range.

Ohio

FAILED: OH +0.7 Clinton, NBC/WSJ poll +11 Clinton, well outside the acceptable five-point range.

Florida

FAILED: FL+1.8 Clinton. WSJ/NBC poll +11 Clinton, well outside the acceptable five-point range.

Why the post-debate polls for CNN and YouGov are wrong

Donald Trump will not win a poll with a +10% Democratic voter sample, and pollsters know it

The YouGov poll, to its credit, provided internals for their poll. CNN has not, although apparently there is more to come.

According to the YouGov poll, Clinton edged out Trump in the debate last night by a 47 to 42 margin. The CNN poll, absurdly, found that Clinton won the debate by a twenty-three point margin, 57 to 34. CNN notes in its article that their results match voter preference from before the debate, where 58% of the debate watchers they are surveying support Clinton.

Sadly, some analysts that people take seriously are lending credibility to these polls, most notably Nate Silver. These analysts shouldn't attach any significance to these polls because they make two fundamental mistakes.

The YouGov poll surveyed registered voters and did not apply a rigorous likely voter screen. They included all voters who did not say that they "definitely" will not vote. Polls of registered voters generally favor Democrats, as even Nate Silver acknowledges. Apparently CNN did not even limit its poll to voters at all, but all debate watchers. Did they poll children? Possibly.

Daily Oct. Surprise tracker 

See the full results here

The second big mistake that YouGov made was not adjusting its voter sample to reflect the population at large. The poll assumes that Democrats would outnumber Republicans in this election by 10%. Of course, if that's the turnout, Democrats will win in a landslide.

Because CNN did not bother to limit its poll to voters, the network would have no need for a turnout model.

In summary, the CNN poll is not a political poll but something more like a television analysis. It's just not useful in a political context and shouldn't be cited.

YouGov did an actual political poll, but did not apply a real likely voter screen and heavily oversampled Democrats. Garbage in, garbage out. IGNORE THESE POLLS.

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Who is right? LA Times daily tracker or Rasmussen Reports

The truth probably more resembles the LA Times polling

LA Times daily tracking poll shows Trump losing no ground to Hillary since the release of the tape. The two daily samples taken by this poll over the weekend show Trump losing an estimated 45-42 on Saturday and winning an estimated 47-39 on Sunday. Rasmussen Reports, on the other hand, shows Trump losing six points to Hillary. The other two polls that have come out show Hillary gaining two and three points respectively.

When we see two polls diverge like the LA Times and Rasmussen, very often they are both outliers, just on opposite sides. It seems reasonable to assume that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

We can probably surmise that any poll showing a six-point shift in any political race where both sides are polarized and have been so from the outset is probably magnifying the shift, which Rasmussen seems to do.

Augmenting actual shifts in the electorate is helpful in political polling because it clearly gives one a sense of what direction things are moving. But it also runs the risk of incorrectly conveying a sense of finality in an election.

Daily Oct. Surprise tracker 

See the full results here

I expect the Rasmussen Reports poll to sharply bounce back towards Trump through the next three days. This is because the dramatic shift is more from Trump losing support rather than Clinton gaining, she gained two and he lost four.

Last night's debate certainly rallied Trump's base back to him, so I imagine he will be back to 41 or 42 by Thursday when all of Rasmussen's numbers will be from after debate.

The LA Times poll is a seven-day tracking poll, so it is designed to remain more stable than polls that only take into account two or three days. With Trump's strong debate performance, I think the LA Times is probably closer to the truth here. The Trump tape will cause a temporary bump for Hillary, but the race probably will remain stable after Trump performed well last night.

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Despite making a number of close calls for Hillary in its overall projection of electoral votes, leading to a Hillary electoral lead, the Reuters/Ipsos polls this week show a close race in the key battlegrounds.

To underscore how close it is, consider the following scenario. If Trump were to win Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Wisconsin, Trump wins the election. These Reuters/Ipsos polls show Trump can do just that with only a slight bump in the polls, like from last night's debate, or if the polls are just a little bit off, like with Brexit.

These polls came after a Clinton win in the first debate and probably reflect a bump for her because of that. Trump leads in Iowa by two points and is tied in Colorado at 45 and North Carolina (44-43). Trump trails by small margins in Nevada (46-42), Wisconsin (46-42), Ohio (46-43) and Florida (49-44).

These polls came before the Trump tape was released and before the second debate. Next week's polls will let us know more, but we really need to wait until October 20th to get a really solid read on this race in the battlegrounds in the Reuters/Ipsos polls.

Click here for Complete Ref's Battleground Index

Trump has a very good chance of winning 265 electoral votes by winning the following states, FL, NC, OH, IA, AZ and NV. His problem comes in that he needs to add one more state from the following list. CO, NH, WI, MI, NM or ME.

After Reuters/Ipsos released good news on both sides of this equation, UPI/CVoter has followed suit. The UPI/CVoter state polls have some good news for Trump. In the CVoter state polls that poll 250 voters per week, for a two-week total of 500 voters, Trump is seen leading in Florida by three (48.9-46.3) and Pennsylvania also by three (49.5-46.4)

If Trump is in fact leading in these two states, he is likely on his way to victory.

The poll also shows Trump within one point in New Hampshire (48.4-47.5). As mentioned above, if Trump secures the 265 electoral votes from FL, NC, OH, IA, NV and AZ, he will only need to win New Hampshire to reach the necessary 269 electoral votes for election. Trump would win a tie.

The same analysis applies to Wisconsin and Colorado, where the polls finds Trump down two in both states. In Wisconsin the results were 49.6 to 47.1 for Clinton. in Colorado Clinton edges Trump 48.3 to 46.6. If Trump secures the 265 electoral votes from his base states, he would only need one of these states, Colorado, Wisconsin or New Hampshire.

Looking at the polling averages, this race is certainly within reach for Trump and may just in fact be a tossup right now. The national edge Hillary carries is probably a result of voter turnout models that assume a very large African-American and millennial turnout. I do not share that assumption. It is also quite possible for Hillary to win the popular vote and lose the electoral vote.

Obama was a unique candidate. I don't see lightning striking again for Democratic turnout like it did in 2008 and 2012. All the evidence shows that African-Americans and millennials are not excited by Clinton or the prospect of Trump winning. Clinton has had her unchallenged shot at these voters and she failed to inspire them. Most pollsters, Sabato and Nate Silver are assuming this Obama machine will show up, but I just don't see the evidence for that assumption.

Click here for Complete Ref's Battleground Index

For five days, the polls did not reflect much of a shift nationally. In the next two days, a few polls came out that changed that a bit. Averaging all of the changes in the polls that have been released, we see that Clinton has gained on Trump nationally by 1.7%.

What we are seeing is a contrast in findings. The pollsters that poll new voters each time are finding a shift for Clinton. Pollsters that track the same voters or do a tracking method are finding a bump for Trump. It's hard to know who is right. The "fundamentals" crowd will likely side with the traditional pollsters, but they are really not finding a different result in their registered voter sample. They are finding the Democrats are now more likely to vote, thereby resulting in the bump.

Daily post-debate tracker 

See the full results here

All of this underscores the challenge this election, who will vote? We don't know. The traditional pollsters are assuming a 2012 type turnout, but that is really in question.

Of the ten battleground states, five of them shifted toward Hillary while one, Ohio, shifted toward Trump. None of the shifts were huge. One poll showed Clinton up 11 in Colorado, but I suspect that is an outlier. We will see. No states have dropped out of competitive status. It doesn't look like folks are changing their minds at this point, but that Democrats and Democratic leaning Independents have become more likely to vote and Republicans and Republican leaners less so.

This could all change if Trump reassures those voters potentially available to him that he is up to the job. The discussion over the former Miss Universe consumed the headlines during this time period.

Trump has a very good chance of winning 265 electoral votes by winning the following states, FL, NC, OH, IA, AZ and NV. His problem comes in that he needs to add one more state from the following list. CO, NH, WI, MI, NM or ME.

The Reuters/Ipsos polls have some good news for Trump on both sides of the equation. In both Nevada and Colorado, their most recent finding shows Trump two points up. Trump is leading 44 to 42 in Nevada and 45 to 43 in Colorado.

Trump is also drawing to a tie in Wisconsin and Michigan in the latest Reuters/Ipsos polling. In Wisconsin the two candidates are tied at 42. In Michigan they each pull 39%.

Some other polls in Colorado show a different picture, but the state has been somewhat volatile. It may be hard to get a good feel for Colorado until very close to the election.

It would not be a surprise for Nevada to go to Trump. Much of the polling in the state is showing a close race.

Wisconsin would be more of a surprise than Nevada. The conventional wisdom labels this a blue state, but Trump has turned Ohio into a likely red state because of its demographics. Wisconsin shares some substantial similarity to Ohio demographically, so it's certainly a real possibility.

Last, Michigan is a surprise. Most polls do not show Trump very close there. But with Trump's different message, Michigan very may be there in the end if Trump takes the lead in national polls.

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Mike Pence: The medicine Trump needs at just the right time

Trump will almost certainly head into his second debate with Hillary Clinton either in a tie with Hillary, or at least moving up in the polls. The reason for this is simple, Mike Pence is front and center tonight and he's the guy who most all Republicans like and can relate to, and they are the ones Trump needs.

It was Republicans who caused Trump to drop a bit in the polls after the first debate. I listed five polls to the right where Trump lost the most support, and in those polls most of his slippage came because Republicans backed off of their support for Trump after the first debate. Pence is a die hard conservative, not only in policy but in temperament. Republicans longing for someone to rally around who is like them will find that man in Mike Pence.

While one might ask, but should this already have happened by now? Only partially. Vice Presidential nominees matter most on three occasions, the selection, the convention speech and the debate. These events are not equal, however, in significance. As we move close to the election, more people pay attention. Now virtually everyone who is going to pay attention is paying attention. That makes the debate key.

Pence can score major points for Trump just by acting like a Republican tonight. Under normal circumstances, Pence would bring some Republicans home. But after Trump's bad week, the Pence effect will be doubly impactful. Especially if Pence hits the subject of the Supreme Court hard, the impact will likely be substantial.

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Most of Trump's losses since the debate have come from Republican defections or loss of Republican enthusiasm. Below are five polls where Trump's losses were most significant after the debate. In each poll, the losses were highest among Republicans, Pence's natural audience.

PUFFING UP DEMOCRAT VOTER SAMPLES

Headlines! PPP declares to all who will listen (not RCP, btw), Clinton Leads in Key Battlegrounds; Seen as Big Debate Winner. Oooh, big news? Trump stalwart Laura Ingraham, strangely, announces the PPP battleground polls just after they come out and for some reason says, "well, Trump isn't destroyed, anyway."

Okay, so what's all the fuss about? PPP shows Hillary leading in five key battlegrounds; Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia. Most strikingly, she's up by two points in Florida and North Carolina, two must win states for Trump. Well never fret Trump supporters, cause it just aint so.

It looks like the Colorado poll could be legit. The party split may actually favor the GOP in this poll, so that's a plus for the poll's legitimacy. What about the sample? The sample size may have been big enough, but we're not sure because the report on the sample is sketchy. Here it is, "Public Policy Polling interviewed likely voters on September 27th and 28th on behalf of VoteVets.org Action Fund. There were 694 respondents in Colorado, 826 in Florida, 861 in North Carolina, 886 in Pennsylvania, and 811 in Virginia."

So it looks like every respondent was a likely voter, what amazing luck! In reality, it was probably people who had been predetermined to be likely voters, or I guess it would have to be, or there's no possible way that everyone they randomly called is a likely voter. Or they may have small likely voter samples, which they didn't report.

___________________

PPP is using ridiculous voter turnout assumptions to pad the Democrat vote

So if PPP predetermined who it would talk to, they should have done a better job of getting a more representative partisan distribution of respondents. In the two states where Clinton ekes out a +2 lead, Florida and North Carolina, PPP assumes that Hillary not only mobilizes the African-American/millennial powerhouse turnout that propelled him to reelection in 2012, but adds about 500,000 additional Dems to that Obama turnout in Florida and 134,000 to the Obama coalition in North Carolina.

This . . . assumption . . . is . . . ridiculous.

It will not happen. Black women voted in higher numbers than any other demographic group in 2012. That will not happen in 2016. PPP's polls should show Trump up in Florida and North Carolina, but they don't, because they were partisan hacks on this one.

Now for Pennsylvania and Virginia. These two polls assumed Hillary would do about as well as Obama at getting out the Democratic vote. They figure that Hillary will draw about 110,000 less voters than Obama in PA and 80,000 less in VA. I just find this assumption hard to defend because Obama had organization and passion on his side. Hillary lacks the passion which is really necessary for good organization. Perhaps it will happen, but I do think it's unlikely.

PPP is assuming that 2016 will be a repeat of 2012 massive Democratic excitement, plus some more Democrats on top of that. There's no good reason to assume this. For that reason, the PPP battleground polls are not predictive. IGNORE

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CBS Pollster YouGov has found the two candidates tied in Colorado, Hillary at 40 and Trump at 39. The poll surveyed 991 "likely voters" and has a margin of error of 4.4%.

I have criticized YouGov in the past (see below) for not using a rigorous enough likely voter screen. It seems that the same problem evident in other YouGov state polls are present here.

Despite the seemingly inadequate likely voter screen, Donald Trump nevertheless draws to a tie in the state.

See:

CBS pollster using deceptive tactic to pad Clinton numbers

More CBS/YouGov "likely" voter polls that are really registered voter polls

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Trump has three advantages that are just kicking in that each could give Trump a lasting bump that can put him over the top. If they all materialize, it is hard to see how Trump loses.

(1) King NeverTrump Surrenders

Ted Cruz endorsed Trump when the race was already tied. Cruz had a hardcore following around the country, and his steadfast opposition no doubt persuaded some of his supporters to also withhold support. It will not persuade the establishment holdouts to change their minds, but they really just don't seem to matter much this time around.

Hillary has already consolidated the support of her fellow Democratic pols. This change of heart for Ted Cruz can only help Donald Trump and likely will.

(2) Low debate expectations, courtesy of Hillary's disqualify Trump strategy

Usually the opposing campaigns attempt to lower expectations for their candidates in debates. This time around, nothing either campaign says will matter. The expectations for the debate were set by Hillary's strategy of attempting to disqualify Trump early on. By utterly ridiculing Trump as a sexist, racist know-nothing, and failing to actually disqualify Trump in enough voters' minds, Hillary has handed Trump the victory in the debate expectations game.  

Trump has made this race a tie with half the country thinking he is unqualified. If he performs just up to an average level in the debates, at least some voters who had previously disqualified him in their minds will open up to voting for him. He only needs a few voters to change their minds, and he may not even need any, so this really presents a problem for Hillary.

How can she possibly further disqualify him more than she already has? She will spend more money attacking him, but everyone in battleground states has heard it all, which brings us to the last, and most substantial, advantage Trump now possesses.

(3) Hillary Ad-vantage gone

Perhaps no advantage is more stark than Trump's new advertising advantage. Because Trump has essentially not played in any substantial way in advertising in the general election and still managed to make it a tie, his new spending should give Trump a durable lead in critical battlegrounds.

The two groups who could guarantee a Trump victory are millennials and minorities. If these groups do not turn out in big numbers for Hillary, she will lose. She is currently struggling to motivate these groups, but if she was ever going to motivate them, it should have already happened.

Hillary has already had her uncontested crack at millennials and minorities on television, and the best she could manage was a tie. Now Donald Trump will even the playing field in the ad dollars battle, and that should put him ahead. Trump has an easily accessible, previously unexploited, target rich environment laying right in front of him that he will hit hard for the next six weeks.

Trump only has to make himself slightly more palatable to these groups and either keep Hillary where she is or bring her down a notch in the eyes of these groups. For Hillary, this is a big problem, one that will be difficult to overcome.

Through September, according to CBS, Secretary Clinton has spent $109.4 million on television advertising compared to Trump's $18.7 million. For two months, Clinton was advertising while Trump did not. Despite the six-to-one advantage in ad spending and eight-week head start, the two candidates find themselves in a dead heat nationally and in the battlegrounds. Ash she herself said, Hillary should be way ahead with her primary voting groups, but she isn't.

Now the Trump campaign has announced that it will spend $140 million on ads over the next six weeks until election day. $100 million of this money will target television with the remaining $40 million targeting a digital audience through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and email.

Trump has an easily accessible, previously unexploited, target rich environment laying right in front of him . . .

Millennials and minorities are not embracing Hillary Clinton in the numbers she needs. Trump has a golden advertising opportunity to pick up support in these groups, or at least further diminish enthusiasm for Hillary.

This represents a major shift in the daily political media environment for voters in battleground states. The operative question, will it make a difference?

First, let's look at TV ads. Some have argued that millennials do not watch much TV, so TV ads won't reach them. That is false. Nearly everyone watches some television, but it is true that millennials watch less than do their fellow older Americans. Younger millennials watch only sixteen hours of television per week. Older millennials watch about twenty-three hours of television per week. As a group, millennials watch fewer hours of television than everyone else. Gen X watches thirty-two hours and people fifty and older watch between forty-four and fifty-one hours of television per week.

So we see that millennials watch about half as much television (16-23 hours/week) as do older Americans (32-51 hours/week). When we consider also that millennials are much more likely to use DVRs and fast forward commercials, then the opportunities to reach them through television become scant. But, as it turns out, this assumption would be mistaken.

Millennials, in counterintuitive fashion, actually use DVRs far less than older Americans. Younger millennials fast forward through commercials, if they even have them, far less than older Americans. They spend 82% of their TV time watching live, more than older Americans. They see more live content because they prefer on-demand content and also watch more events that are generally watched live like sporting events or reality shows. In addition, fewer subscribe to cable/satellite and they are more diverse racially. Racial minorities in general own fewer DVRs.

So while millennials watch substantially less television overall, when they do watch it they are more likely to see commercials. For example, if a twenty-four year old female watches twenty hours of TV a week and watches 80% of it live, that gives the candidates sixteen hours of programming time during a week in which to insert it's commercials. For every hour of live television, one will see about fourteen minutes of commercials. So of that sixteen hours, nearly four hours of it will be commercials.

If you live in a battleground state you know that rarely does a commercial break pass without a political ad airing. If the two candidates buy up twenty percent of the advertising, splitting it evenly, that gives each candidate twenty-four minutes a week to appeal to these voters.

Hillary has been reaching these people uninterrupted for the last three months and millennials are not responding in the numbers she needs. Donald Trump is just starting to target these voters. This represents a major opportunity for him to counter-program the popular culture, academic and media elites, who along with Hillary's campaign have been savaging Trump daily for months.

We don't need to wonder, we know that Trump will reach these voters. If he can simply turn a few of these young and minority voters his direction, this tied race is likely to move his direction.

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In a four-way race, Trump has pulled to within two points of Hillary according to the Muhlenberg College poll (Morning Call), a well-respected poll. Trump receives 38 percent to Hillary's 40 percent.

In this poll, Trump has closed the gap by six points since the last measure. He has achieved this by increasing his support, not by reducing hers.

This is probably a reflection of Donald Trump spending money in Pennsylvania on advertising. He has not been spending money there long, while Hillary has been spending a large amount focused on attacks on Trump.

If this is the main reason, one can expect this tightening to hold because the Trump team announced Friday that they would be spending heavily the rest of the way.

The poll shows Donald Trump gaining supporters and Hillary holding hers.

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The McClatchy/Marist national poll released today shows a six point lead for Hillary Clinton nationally. After comparing that poll to the other polls released in a similar time frame, it seems that the results should be weighted.

Nate Silver also noted that the few national polls released this week showing a big shift toward Clinton are out of step with other polling and probably do not indicate a real shift. See his Election Update: Reports Of A Clinton Rebound Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

As such, the poll will be included in the poll averages but weighted down so as to have only half the impact it normally would have.

If one doubts this approach, just ask if the election were held today would the national popular vote vary from the Florida and Ohio popular vote by a margin of 6.33 to 8.6 points respectively? Considering that those states usually closely track the national popular vote, as demonstrated to the right, it is highly unlikely and weighting makes sense here.

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Foul Called on McClatchy/Marist Poll Penalty: 0.5 weight applied in poll averages

National Polls

6.8 point variation, FAILED: Other national polls +0.8 for Trump, McClatchy/Marist poll shows +6.0 for Clinton

Ohio

8.6 point variation, FAILED: OH+2.6 Trump, McClatchy/Marist poll shows +6.0 for Clinton

Florida

6.33 point varation, FAILED: FL+0.33 Trump, McClatchy/Marist poll shows +6.0 for Clinton

The NBC/WSJ poll released Wednesday found Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by six points among likely voters. The NBC/Survey Monkey poll released Tuesday found a five-point lead for Hillary among likely voters. I would not care about this if these were registered voter polls, but because they are likely voter polls and a good filter was allegedly applied, these need more scrutiny.

NBC reported that Hillary had stopped the bleeding from her bad weekend and reversed the tide, now firmly back in control of the race. NBC also found the same level of voter intensity for Hillary Clinton as for Donald Trump. Huh, seems out of sync with everything else we are hearing, right?

All other national polls taken at the same time show a closer race, some with Trump leading, some with Clinton leading. The Economist shows a +2 for Clinton. Reuters shows a +2 for Trump. LA Times shows a +4 for Trump. UPI daily tracking shows a +1 for Clinton. Averaging those polls, you find a 0.8 point lead for Trump. So comparing to other national numbers shows us that the NBC polls probably are applying a flawed turnout model.

Another way to assess the NBC polls is to compare them to state polls from states that are bellwethers. Ohio's popular vote has nearly matched the national popular vote each year since 1996, as the chart demonstrates to the right. Florida also matched the popular vote very closely, although it tends to slightly favor Republicans.

Generally, the national polls should roughly match Ohio's poll results. This is true so long as a candidate is not from Ohio or is appealing to a particular voting tendency in Ohio. Trump may be doing just that by running a blue collar themed campaign. But Hillary is also mobilizing her supporters in the state and it is likely that Ohio will closely match the national result this year.

Florida favors the GOP a bit, by about a point and half above the national result. It is consistently off the national number by about a point and a half. One thing is true for both states, they have each picked the winner in the last five elections.

Both of these states are heavily polled. Also, the population is much smaller than the nation at large, so it is easier to get an accurate measure of voter opinion.

To determine if a poll is an outlier due to a flawed turnout model, a three-prong test will be applied. First, the poll must be within five points of the average of all other national polls. Second, it must be within five points of the current Ohio average. Last, it must be within five points of the current Florida poll averages. Both NBC polls failed each prong of the test.

Once a poll fails this test, a weight will be applied to that poll in the national averages. The poll will only count half as much as the other polls that do not indicate a flawed voter turnout model.

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Foul Called on NBC/WSJ and NBC/Survey Monkey Polls Penalty: 0.5 weight applied in poll averages

National Polls

FAILED: Other national polls +0.8 Trump, NBC polls +5 and +6 for Clinton

Ohio

FAILED: OH+2.6 Trump, NBC polls are 7.6 and 8.6 points off

Florida

FAILED: FL+0.33 Trump, NBC polls are 5.36 and 6.36 points off

Not only is Trump polling much better than he was in Colorado up until September, but he is actually leading in the state in the two polls taken there in September. In the Emerson poll Trump is up four points, receiving 42 to Clinton's 38. In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, Trump leads by three, 43 to 40.

Considering that Clinton was so confidant in Colorado that she pulled her money out of the state in July, these September polls represent an earthquake in Colorado and nationally.

I added Colorado to the Battleground Index tonight, which only includes states that are actually close in the recent polling. He is ahead in Colorado by 3.5 points. Colorado adds another minimal scenario for Trump to win, which expands his options exponentially. Colorado makes a very significant electoral difference.

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Photo attribution

Nate Silver famously has a secret algorithm to determine who is the likely winner in a race. His algorithm is showing that Trump has broken fifty percent for the first time in Nevada tonight. This is significant because Silver calculates more than polls, including the economy, the incumbent, etc. Using all of this, Silver is seeing Nevada is even.

The polling alone is showing Trump ahead because most of the other factors favor Hillary. I show Trump slightly up according to the polls. Nevada is a big deal. Once Trump has Nevada, he only needs to add New Hampshire to win the White House by my calculation. New Hampshire and Nevada are the states to watch to see if Trump will become the favorite.

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ADR, 16--09-19

No matter where you look, if you're watching the MSM or a NeverTrumper is on the screen, you will hear the statement that Trump needs to win Pennsylvania. NeverTrumper Glenn Beck pushes this notion on his show regularly. The reason they do this is to put all the focus on Pennsylvania, where it is always an uphill fight for a Republican and the polls often look tough. Glenn knows that he has Trump supporters in his audience and his goal is to demoralize them. Unfortunately, he often distorts the truth or simply misstates it, to accomplish this goal. Trump absolutely does NOT need Pennsylvania to win.

The Glenn Beck crew plays a game where they pretend to be generous with electoral votes, assuming that Trump will win where he may not, and then they hit you with a demoralizing, gulp inducing statement, he still loses! There are a couple of problems with this. First, he is not being generous by assuming Trump will win North Carolina or Iowa. Trump is definitely up in Iowa and North Carolina is a tossup, but probably leans Trump. Remember, Obama didn't win the state when he had the biggest non-white voter turnout in history, which will almost certainly not be replicated this time.

The next problem becomes apparent when you actually do the math along with Glenn, Pat and Stu. They either can't do math or they are misrepresenting the truth. You decide.

Listen to this example where Glenn is being "generous," yet he refuses to assume that Trump will win Nevada, despite the fact that Trump is ahead there. He also questions whether Trump will win Texas. What? Glenn then asks what happens if Trump wins Colorado, which would make it an electoral tie, 269-269. If it's a tie, then Trump will win because of the GOP holding more state delegations in the House in this Congress. In a tie, this Congress would break the tie in favor of Trump, no doubt.

Perhaps they were assuming that Trump wouldn't win the second district in Maine, but Trump is leading there, so they shouldn't assume that.

Despite this truth, Glenn concludes his Friday show with an attempt to demoralize the Trump supporters in his audience. We expect this kind of behavior from the MSM, but Glenn Beck pretends to be above partisan rancor, stating that he is only interested in the truth. Maybe he shouldn't use distortions to push his narrative if he wants us to believe that.

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Listen to Glenn put all the chips on Pennsylvania here

In all battlegrounds, Trump leads by 0.50 points. In the map below, we see the scenario imagined by Glenn, Pat and Stu, and yes, Trump wins in this scenario.

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

Trump can win in numerous realistic scenarios without Pennsylvania. Here are four of them. See my battleground index Scenario 1 (270EV): Trump loses VA, NH and NV, wins FL, NC, OH, WI, IA, AZ - Trump +1.58 Scenario 2 (270EV): Trump loses VA and WI, wins FL, OH, NC, IA, NV, AZ, NH - Trump +1.36 Scenario 3 (273EV): Trump loses WI, IA and NH, wins VA, FL, OH, NC, NV, AZ - Clinton +0.70 Scenario 4 (276EV): Trump loses VA and NH, wins FL, OH, NC, WI, IA, NV, AZ - Trump +1.50

ADR, 16--09-19

Trump's poll surge is about to get tested. The MSM will test it like auto manufacturers test the integrity of their frames, with repeated head-on collisions while they studiously note where they might hit again to yield a total structure failure. The question is, however, after months of incredible outrage directed at Trump, how much damage can the MSM do to the Donald?

The MSM thought that Donald Trump had a bad Friday, not as bad as face-planting into the Scooby van, but bad. As Trump basher Glenn Thrush wrote in Politico, Trump could get cocky and make a mistake and the liberal MSM is waiting for it. The media thinks they witnessed such a mistake Friday night in front a raucous crowd, but they are wrong. Here's why.

The off-script imagining of what would happen if the Secret Service surrendered their weapons is in reality a pointed criticism of Clinton hypocrisy. The problem for Trump is that the liberal media, whose self-described mission it is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, don't much like the type of afflicted that he represents. So instead of viewing the remarks as a populist critique of an elitist, MSM spun it as unhinged.

How one views these comments is determined by one's perspective on gun rights. The MSM doesn't value 2nd Amendment rights so they don't understand why people are fearful of Hillary, who many view as deserving of the kind of condemnation Trump delivered. She relies on gun protection but wants to take your guns away and will appoint a Justice who will do just that. That is, in actual fact, genuine elitist hypocrisy.

The comments Trump made, when viewed as criticism of banning guns, make sense. When viewed as just a threat of course they look unhinged. Most Americans value the 2nd Amendment, unlike the media, so they instinctively disagree with the MSM take.

The media ignores the legitimate nature of a condemnation of the gun ban Hillary wants to impose through the Court. Instead, the MSM played the controvery up as a whacky threat as screenshots of their landing pages demonstrate. But unlike the last foray into an alleged threat by Trump, the story did not continue to take the lead on the websites Saturday. I think I know why.

First, I'm not speaking about loony CNN and MSNBC. I didn't watch either network, so I don't know if they went wall-to-wall with it, but I suspect they did. But those networks don't move persuadable voters because they don't watch political news. The Internet might move them, but it's got to be sustained for several days and this story won't last.

Here's why the media will largely drop it. The first time Trump got in trouble for a 2nd Amendment comment, the media pushed the Trump unhinged narrative relentlessly. It moved some persuadables against him temporarily, but it also was representative of an approach to covering politics that has deeply wounded the press.

Most Americans view them as deeply biased and unfair to Trump. The Gallup poll released this week showing that only 14% of Republicans and 30% of Independents trust the media, and only 32% overall, shows us how bad the problem is. This poll shows that they have lost almost 70% of the country, which seems to include most of the persuadables. Most of that 70% just happen to be people who highly prize the 2nd Amendment. The media gets that so they are going to drop it.

In all battlegrounds, Trump leads by 0.50 points. Nationally, Clinton leads by 0.2 points with likely voters. Trump can win in several scenarios laid out below without Pennsylvania. See more here

Scenario 1 (270EV): Trump loses VA, NH and NV, wins FL, NC, OH, WI, IA, AZ - Trump +1.27 Scenario 2 (270EV): Trump loses VA and WI, wins FL, OH, NC, IA, NV, AZ, NH - Trump +1.09 Scenario 3 (273EV): Trump loses WI, IA and NH, wins VA, FL, OH, NC, NV, AZ - Clinton +0.60 Scenario 4 (276EV): Trump loses VA and NH, wins FL, OH, NC, WI, IA, NV, AZ - Trump +1.23

In addition to their loss of credibility, the press is facing the same problem as the Hillary campaign. They have attacked Trump so viciously, repetitively and in such personal terms that Trump is, at least in substantial part, inoculated from further character attacks. The vast majority of American voters have tuned them out, carefully constructing their own news networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and iHeartRadio, among many other social networks. To break through, the MSM must go nuclear, which further shrinks their audience, and they just aren't going to keep doing that for Hillary Clinton because they don't like her and the media realizes their problem.

Frank Bruni made the point that Democrats (and the media) have so often labeled Republicans racists and abhorrent that their claims now fall on deaf ears. Bruni cites Democratic operative Howard Wolfson who recalls using language against John McCain and Mitt Romney that was hyperbolic, inaccurate and undermined his credibility. NeverTrumper Jonah Goldberg also made this point when he wrote that decades of unfair attacks on the GOP leaves the MSM without credibility to effectively bring Trump down.

Howard Kurtz asks whether Clinton has used all of her best ammo. She went "nuclear" in ripping Trump's temperament for three months straight, in media, advertising and through every surrogate, and now she is tied with the trend line going against her. Kurtz cites NeverTrumper Rich Lowry who said that even he "is sick of seeing" Hillary's attacks on Trump "every other time" he turns on the TV.

So how do we know if the media attacks really have lost their teeth against Trump? Nate Silver is telling us to look at the polls in a week to see if Hillary is really in trouble. If she doesn't reverse the trend, Silver writes that not only is Trump having a few good weeks, but the Democrats should panic. If Trump does hold his gains, one could reasonably conclude that Trump is inoculated from their ruthless character attacks to a significant extent and that this race has really turned toward him. After a full day of polling after this story broke, today's LA Times tracking poll shows Trump gaining yet again. The 2nd Amendment story didn't hurt him yet and I suspect it won't in the coming week.

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The headline on fivethirtyeight.com today is How Trump Could Win the White House While Losing the Popular Vote. He first makes clear that he is not predicting a Trump win and that he stands by his algorithm for predicting elections. Okay, got it. As I see it, he then proceeds to make that case that if his algorithm is somewhere around 50/50 in predicting a winner, he's really saying that Trump is the more likely winner.

If I'm right, we are now in a place where a 50/50 prediction is really more like a 55/45 or even a 60/40 bet for Trump, right? Wouldn't that suggest that Mr. Silver's algorithm has a flaw that perhaps he should adjust? Let's look deeper.

Mr. Silver explains why this electoral win, despite a popular vote loss, is more likely than normal. The reason makes sense. Clinton faces a big electoral problem because she holds a very large lead in some of the big states in which she leads, popular vote that will not manifest in the electoral vote. She is also too far behind in other smaller states where anti-Trump demographics are located for those NeverTrumpers and the like to make a difference.

Specifically, three of the groups where Trump is doing the worst, college educated whites, Latinos and Mormons, are concentrated in states that are not battlegrounds. College-educated whites exceed 35% of the population in only two battlegrounds, New Hampshire and Colorado, neither of which are states Trump needs. Latinos exceed 15% only in three battlegrounds, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. Silver makes the point that Arizona has too big of a GOP built-in advantage to overcome. He also notes that Trump doesn't need Nevada, although he is leading there, and all Trump really needs is to improve on Romney's performance among whites by 3% in Florida to the overcome Latino bump in Florida.

Last, Silver looks at Mormons. Trump is not doing well among Mormons, probably because prominent Mormons like Romney, Glenn Beck and Jeff Flake routinely attack Trump. Despite this fact, however, Mormons are not located in areas where they are likely to make an electoral difference. Most Mormons are concentrated in Utah, California and Idaho. The outcome in those three states is certain, Trump will win Utah and Idaho and Clinton will will California. The Mormon populations in Nevada and Arizona are too small to matter much.

So in summary, we can conclude from Mr. Silver's analysis a couple of things. First, the national polls don't matter that much because they include larger than normal leads in populous states that will not translate to additional electoral votes. California, New York and Illinois are examples. Those national polls also include states where Trump may have a smaller than the normal GOP lead because of such anti-Trump groups, but leads that are nearly certain to hold on election day anyway. Texas, Arizona, Utah an Idaho are good examples.

In all battlegrounds, Trump leads by 0.29 points. Trump can win in several scenarios laid out below without Pennsylvania. See more here

Scenario 1 (270EV): Trump loses VA, NH and NV, wins FL, NC, OH, WI, IA, AZ - Trump +1.27 Scenario 2 (270EV): Trump loses VA and WI, wins FL, OH, NC, IA, NV, AZ, NH - Trump +1.09 Scenario 3 (273EV): Trump loses WI, IA and NH, wins VA, FL, OH, NC, NV, AZ - Clinton +0.60 Scenario 4 (276EV): Trump loses VA and NH, wins FL, OH, NC, WI, IA, NV, AZ - Trump +1.23

What to do about this dilemma? This question highlights the facts necessary to make a second conclusion. I would expect that Mr. Silver ought not show a 50/50 prediction if he thinks Trump's chances are better than 50/50, as he seems to suggest he would in this article. We can conclude from this that if he ends up throwing up his hands and going with the 50/50 prediction, or something close to it, it seems like a way for him to avoid predicting a Trump win while still getting credit for it in the end.

Nate Silver can point to this article and remind us that his 50/50 prediction was really a Trump-win prediction. For that matter, he could point to the article he wrote today to argue that his current 60/40 prediction was really more like a 50/50 bet, and he was just off a little on an assumption here or there. I'm starting to have may doubts. Remember, he already admitted that he screwed up on Donald Trump once. It looks like he's again unwilling to formally acknowledge the gains Trump is making.

This is what we are seeing with Sabato's Crystal Ball, a nod to the fact that Trump has better chances than the analysts are willing to formally state. It's hedging the bet or CYA, pick your description, but they both fit.

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Nearly every political pundit dismisses Trump's chance of winning. in part it is bias, but most genuinely do believe that Trump will lose. For the most part, it's the conventional factors we look at to determine who will win that is driving their confidence. Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball incorporates such factors, only one of which is polling, to determine who will win. Betting sites do the same thing, relying on polls only as a portion of their calculation.

But on Thursday, Sabato and company admitted that their normal model is possibly not as reliable in this election. The normal assumptions they make, he points out, are not necessarily holding up. One political scientist notes that the assumption that parties will nominate mainstream candidates who will unify the party are not holding up. Also, the assumption that both candidates will run effective campaigns is not necessarily going to bare out.

Throughout the article, while still holding to the prediction of a Clinton win, Sabato gives numerous reasons why he might be wrong and Trump may win.

Trump could turn this into a change election. He would do this by acting like a normal candidate and taking attention from himself. Clinton controversies could take the focus from Trump as well. Much of this is already happening now, and it's easy to see it continuing, with Wikileaks promising their biggest releases still to come.

Sabato points out that while the polls in battleground states and nationally are close, Clinton still holds a slight lead. But, he also points out that the polls could be wrong if this electorate is not more diverse than the last one. Sabato's Crystal Ball is assuming that "that the 2016 electorate will be at least as diverse as 2012." But Trump driving white voter turnout and Clinton failing to inspire young diverse voters could easily change that, a possibility he acknowledges would throw off his projection.

Another factor that could throw off the Crystal Ball could be that Clinton's advertising and ground game advantages won't impact younger voters as much as others. I think this is a certainty, considering that younger voters are sophisticated about advertising avoidance on TV and other media, and they aren't likely to care if someone tells them they should vote. It seems more likely that they are tuning all of this out considering the high negatives of both candidates. Hillary is nothing like Obama on this front.

Sabato also notes that unlike recent elections, this electorate may be leaning more Republican than Democrat, although his current model does not assume that. He still assumes a significant Democratic advantage, but acknowledges that this could be wrong based on polling finding greater Republican enthusiasm and potential turnout.

In all battlegrounds, Trump leads by 0.29 points. Trump can win in several scenarios laid out below without Pennsylvania. See more here

Scenario 1 (270EV): Trump loses VA, NH and NV, wins FL, NC, OH, WI, IA, AZ - Trump +1.27 Scenario 2 (270EV): Trump loses VA and WI, wins FL, OH, NC, IA, NV, AZ, NH - Trump +1.09 Scenario 3 (273EV): Trump loses WI, IA and NH, wins VA, FL, OH, NC, NV, AZ - Clinton +0.60 Scenario 4 (276EV): Trump loses VA and NH, wins FL, OH, NC, WI, IA, NV, AZ - Trump +1.23

Last, he acknowledges that he is taking a risk by not using his toss-up rating, a measure that would cut into his Hillary projection by rating some very close states as toss ups. He writes, "we are trying to hold off on that this year, in what could be a mistaken stroke of courage."

My analysis sees the "outer ring" of Democratic defenses as already breached. This includes Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and the two congressional district electoral votes in Maine and Nebraska. That leaves Trump only needing New Hampshire, not Pennsylvania, to win the election. It seems Sabato is acknowledging that this could easily happen as is apparent by the multitude of caveats he offered in his latest projection.

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WLOS, an ABC affiliate in Asheville, NC is reporting that a Trump supporter punched an elderly woman. There were no eyewitnesses and the alleged attacker was not arrested, but a warrant has been issued. From the video of the alleged victim within the news story, no visible signs of a punch are apparent.

Despite no eyewitnesses or evidence beyond the alleged victim's story, the affiliate is reporting this as a fact. The headline also seems to advocate that this is a deplorable act, seemingly taking the words of Hillary Clinton and applying them to a Trump supporter with no firm evidence. The story has been picked up by other news outlets nationally. For example, WKRC in Cincinnati is now carrying the story on it's website.

Journalistic integrity demands that this be reported as an allegation and not a statement of fact. In this highly charged election season, this sort of incomplete reporting can spark a national controversy based strictly on the claim of one person with no supporting evidence.

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A screenshot of the original story can be seen here.

We have seen a major shift in the one national poll that contains data from after Hillary's "basket of deplorables" comment and her physical collapse at the 9/11 memorial. In one national poll, Donald Trump is now matching his number from his convention bounce. He now leads Hillary by nearly five points, receiving 46.7% to her 42.0% in the LA Times Daily tracking poll.

On the day of Hillary's physical collapse, Hillary actually led Trump by 1.4 points. In just three days, we have seen a 6.1 point swing in the polls. This marks the biggest swing in the LA Times daily tracking poll this election season. The only swings that are comparable came during both conventions. Trump saw a seven-point swing during his convention over six days, and Clinton received a five-point bounce during the DNC over three days. This swing is bigger because it occured in only three days.

We see bounces in polls that come and go. What makes this swing different is its size and the fact that it includes just over a third of the total voter sample. The LA Times tracking poll surveys 400 people per day, so only 1200 people of the total 3000 voter sample has been surveyed after the "deplorable" comments and the fall. To create a six-point swing, Trump must be receiving a much larger share of the daily voters than he has been receiving in the past.

Of course this is only one poll. We will know much more in two weeks when we have the first debate. This poll is our first indication that Trump may actually take a national lead into the debates.

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Dead Heat in the Battlegrounds

0.29 point Margin in Ref's Battlegrounds.

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

Despite two recent polls showing a tied race, a PPP poll in Virginia released today contends that the VA race has returned to stasis. The poll showed a six-point edge for Hillary, right around the five-point average lead she has held in recent months. This comes after Clinton had surged will into the lead in Virginia since her convention, by somewhere between seven and thirteen points.

If Virginia is back to where it started in a poll in the field through 9/11 when the medical incident occurred, shouldn't we expect it to move toward Trump now, at least temporarily? The race has probably reset for some with Clinton attacking voters and causing real doubt that she's physically up to the job. Many Virginia voters are in the military and I suspect the deplorable comment went over badly with those folks. After-all, they are serving the country. Wouldn't a civilian calling their mates deplorable while they are putting their lives on the line cause some leaning Hillary to reconsider? That deplorable comment will impact Virginia more so than most states.

I suspect PPP is right that Virginia is for Clinton by around five points absent new information, but this weekend qualifies as ground-shaking. I'm just saying we should see what Virginia does over the coming two weeks leading up to debate. If it pulls back to even, Trump could take the lead in the debates.

You doubt that? Well for Trump it's all about being an acceptable alternative. If he continues to play the roll of presidential and finally starts spending real ad dollars in Virginia, he could pass that low bar. He doesn't have to be that fast, just faster than Hillary. We learned this weekend that she is pretty slow politically. And remember, Virginia is the headquarters of the establishment. If you see the establishment start to move to Trump as polls tighten, as some already have, then watch Virginia close.

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Dead Heat in the Battlegrounds

0.29 point Margin in Ref's Battlegrounds.

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll shows the race is close, with Hillary up by two points. The poll was taken from August 26th to September 8th, including 613 likely voters. This close margin is consistent with their last two polls that actually showed Trump ahead. Google also found Trump ahead. Two other polls found Clinton only up five points, Emerson and Fox 2 Detroit.

Michigan is always a tough state for Republicans. That Trump is close and even ahead in several polls taken in the last month, shows the party has a real chance this time. Trump would likely need a national lead of around three to four points to take the state. Follow my new account on Twitter for daily updates on the election!

Dead Heat in the Battlegrounds

0.29 point Margin in Ref's Battlegrounds.

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

Trump is now tied or leading in five of the nine closest battlegrounds. He is also tied or leading in five of the six battlegrounds he would need for election. So he could be as close as one state away.

Trump took the lead in the poll averages in Florida today, a significant shift. No doubt the Hillary camp intended to take a lead into the debates, but that is now out the window.

All the talking heads assumed Trump would need a major breakthrough in the debates, but now it looks like it may be enough just to avoid mistakes. The trend in all of the state polling is favoring Trump. Follow my new account on Twitter for daily updates on the election!

Trump now leading Hillary in average of Florida polls - +0.5 Points

0.17 point Margin in Ref's Battlegrounds.

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Trump leading Hillary by 2 points in Colorado. Trump tops Clinton, receiving 43% to Clinton's 41% support in the poll. The poll included 417 likely voters and was taken from August 26th to September 8th. Donald Trump started closing the gaps in the polls on September 1st, so this poll includes some data prior to that time.

The other most recent poll shows Hillary up by 5 points. That poll was taken prior to the polls beginning to tighten nationwide. Colorado may now be a battleground again. Averaging those polls gives Hillary a 1.5 point lead. Follow my new account on Twitter for daily updates on the election!

Dead Heat in the Battlegrounds

0.17 point Margin in Ref's Battlegrounds.

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

These recent YouGov state polls are demonstrating a consistent flaw, reporting a registered voter poll as a likely voter poll. Registered voter polls, according to Nate Silver, almost always favor Democrats. This probably represents the most likely explanation for the CBS pollster using this tactic.

According to the Ohio poll released today, 994 of the 1000 registered voters they surveyed were deemed likely to vote. Included in the pool of likely voters were registered voters who deemed themselves a "maybe" as to whether they will vote or not, and also those who said they will "probably" vote. These voters combined to represent seven percent of the likely voter pool. They were all deemed likely voters. Most pollsters throw those voters out of the likely voter pool.

Opening up the likely voter pool to include essentially every registered voter they talked to resulted in a +7 Democratic voter turnout assumption in a state that is even, with a one-point Republican party ID edge as recently as 2014. Not to mention, the intensity is on Trump's side, so nothing justifies assuming such a high Democratic turnout.

It was no better in the Florida poll, where they assumed only seven of the 1200 registered voters they interviewed would stay home, despite the fact that around 72 of those registered voters said they were a "maybe" or a "probably," as opposed to definitely. Again, this is not what most pollsters assume.

This poll assumed Democrats would have a +2 turnout advantage on election day, a much more reasonable assumption than Ohio. That assumption is in line with recent elections. The poll also had a much more reasonable outcome, but among registered voters, not likely voters.

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The Ref's Battleground Index

Clinton +0.20 Points in All Ref Battlegrounds

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Trump leading Hillary by 2 points in Wisconsin. Trump tops Clinton, receiving 40% to Clinton's 38% support in the poll. The poll included 523 likely voters and was taken from August 26th to September 8th. The tightening in polls began right around September 1st around the country, so this poll includes just under half of its sample from before that time, suggesting more movement favoring Trump is possible.

The fivethirtyeight.com website rates Ipsos polls with an A- rating, which is high grade for the website. The poll barely skews Democratic, according to fivethirtyeight.com, by 0.1%. This indicates that it has a very small bias. Many polls have a worse bias, such as CBS's pollster YouGov that has a bias of plus 1.6% for Democrats.

This changes Wisconsin from +2.34 points for Clinton to +2.0 for her in the Ref's Battleground Index.

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The Ref's Battleground Index

Clinton +0.84 Points in All Ref Battlegrounds

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

A Google poll finds Trump leading Hillary in in Pennsylvania by two points. Clinton receives 33%, Trump 35% and Gary Johnson 11%. The poll included 808 likely voters, a fairly good sized likely voter poll.

The fivethirtyeight.com website rates Google Consumer Survey polls with a B rating, which is a middling grade, but decent. The poll slightly skews Republican, according to fivethirtyeight.com, by 0.6%. This indicates that it is a small bias. Many polls have a worse bias, such as CBS's pollster YouGov that has a bias of plus 1.6% for Democrats.

The Ref's Battleground Index

Clinton +0.24 Points in All Ref Battlegrounds

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

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UPDATE: Nate Silver analyzed these types of polls yesterday, where a pollster will call people in all fifty states and then release results from each state based on demographic data. Unsurprisingly, his analysis agreed with mine, that a simple demographic filter does nothing to effectively determine who will actually vote in each of the fifty states.

He pointed out that the method has not been empirically tested and that the demographic weighting is too slight and not reflective of actual turnout. Further, he noted that identifying where voters live based on IP address is a flawed process, certain to place some respondents in the wrong state. The process produces weird results in states, results like we note below in Texas and Mississippi. He concludes that these state-by-state subsamples from a fifty-state poll are not the same as actual polls directed specifically at one state at a time.

The Washington Post commissioned a poll of all registered voters and decided to draw conclusions about who holds an electoral advantage from the results. The problem for the Washington Post, and they undoubtedly know this, is that polls of all registered voters always heavily favor Democrats and skew the results in such a way that they are ineffective in determining a likely winner. To compound this problem, when applying this registered voter approach to fifty states and then applying a simple demographic model as a filter, as opposed to a well-tested historically based voter turnout model, you really get bad results.

The Survey Monkey poll weighted the results to match "demographic characteristics of registered voters in each state," rather than typical voter turnout models. Elections are not decided by a demographically representative pool of registered voters. If that were the case, the Democrats would win every national election because there are more registered Democrats. The problem for Democrats is that they have a big problem getting their voters to actually turn out and vote, and that is true every time.

Republicans do better in off-year elections because their voters turn out, even when the national focus is not on politics. Democrats do better in presidential years because so much attention is paid to politics. But even in a presidential year, only 60% of the potential electorate will turn out and vote.

The Washington Post's pollster is not filtering for who is likely to vote. What this method of polling achieves is a built-in bump for any Democrat, usually a big one. Nate Silver demonstrates the statistical bias towards Democrats in both presidential and non-presidential election years.

One need not delve into the statistics to see the invalidity of this type of poll for determining who will win fifty state elections. One need only look at the results to find that the poll is not predictive.

The Washington Post poll found that Trump is tied with Hillary in Mississippi and Texas. There is no chance that Hillary will win either state. There simply are not enough NeverTrumpers in the GOP to accomplish this task. But in the imaginary world the Washington Post created, that could happen.

This poll does accomplish one thing, however, something WaPo would not have wanted to demonstrate. Because Trump is running even or ahead in a number of normally Democratic states even when the sample is skewed to favor Democrats, it demonstrates that Trump has real strength in those states.

The Ref's Battleground Index

Clinton +0.24 Points in All Ref Battlegrounds

There are now four realisitic scenarios where Trump can win without Pennsylvania.

Registered voter polls, as opposed to likely voter polls, always favor Democrats

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*If Trump wins Pennsylvania, he will likely win Ohio and Florida and win the election. But Trump does not need Pennsylvania to win. This is a constant refrain of pro-Hillary pundits and NeverTrumpers. Trump has realistic chances without Pennsylvania, and they are mapped out here, including the current poll average margin between the candidates using the most recent and reliable polling.

Scenario 1 (270EV): Trump loses VA, NH and NV, wins FL, NC, OH, WI, IA, AZ - Trump +0.90

Scenario 2 (270EV): Trump loses VA and WI, wins FL, OH, NC, IA, NV, AZ, NH - Trump +0.23

Scenario 3 (273EV): Trump loses WI, IA and NH, wins VA, FL, OH, NC, NV, AZ - Trump +0.07

Scenario 4 (276EV): Trump loses VA and NH, wins FL, OH, NC, WI, IA, NV, AZ - Trump +0.51.

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I am keeping a running average of national polls here. I am keeping an average of registered and likely voters. I will also not include old polls in the averages after the race has shifted, which can throw off the averages. Trump is currently witihin 1.2 points among likely voters.

Check back later today for an update on the Ref's battleground index.

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The Washington Post commissioned a poll of all registered voters and decided to draw conclusions about who holds an electoral advantage from the results. The problem for the Washington Post, and they undoubtedly know this, is that polls of all registered voters always heavily favor Democrats and skew the results in such a way that they are ineffective in determining a likely winner. It may be useful in determining public opinion of registered voters, but who cares about that when we are talking about who will actually win? We want likely voters' opinions.

The Survey Monkey poll weighted the results to match "demographic characteristics of registered voters in each state," rather than typical voter turnout models. Elections are not decided by a demographically representative pool of registered voters. If that were the case, the Democrats would win every national election because there are more registered Democrats. The problem for Democrats is that they have a big problem getting their voters to actually turn out and vote, and that is true every time.

Republicans do better in off-year elections because their voters turn out, even when the national focus is not on politics. Democrats do better in presidential years because so much attention is paid to politics. But even in a presidential year, only 60% of the potential electorate will turn out and vote.

The Washington Post's pollster is not filtering for who is likely to vote. What this method of polling achieves is a built-in bump for any Democrat, usually a big one. Nate Silver demonstrates the statistical bias towards Democrats in both presidential and non-presidential election years.

One need not delve into the statistics to see the invalidity of this type of poll for determining who will win fifty state elections. One need only look at the results to find that the poll is not predictive.

The Washington Post poll found that Trump is tied with Hillary in Mississippi and Texas. There is no chance that Hillary will win either state. There simply are not enough NeverTrumpers in the GOP to accomplish this task. But in the imaginary world the Washington Post created, that could happen.

This poll does accomplish one thing, however, something WaPo would not have wanted to demonstrate. Because Trump is running even or ahead in a number of normally Democratic states even when the sample is skewed to favor Democrats, it demonstrates that Trump has real strength in those states.

The Ref's Battleground Index

Clinton +2.1 Points in All Ref Battlegrounds (Trump +0.4 from last result)

Clinton +1.9 Points in Traditional GOP States (Trump +0.2 from last result)

Registered voter polls, as opposed to likely voter polls, always favor Democrats

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The Ref's battleground index includes Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire. Those states are included because the polls show them to be battlegrounds. Michigan and Pennsylvania are showing signs of closing, but haven't quite gotten there yet. Remember, contrary to conventional wisdom, Trump can win rather easily without Pennsylvania.

With each new poll in the last few days we have seen a major tightening, now to the point where the candidates are undoubtedly statistically tied. Every poll in the battleground states is within the margin of error. One notable exception are the Pennsylvania and North Carolina CBS/YouGov polls, which absurdly assume a 99% turnout, an assumption that bumps Hillary's result by substantial margins. The North Carolina poll was within the margin of error even with the laughable likely voter filter applied.

Today we saw the release of a string of battleground polls that have to frighten the Hillary camp and the media campaign to elect Hillary Clinton. Reuters/Ipsos released the following poll results:

Iowa - Trump 44% Clinton 41%

Maine - Trump 42% Clinton 42%

Michigan - Trump 42% Clinton 42%

New Hampshire - Trump 45% Clinton 44%

Ohio - Trump 46% Clinton 43%

Utah - Trump 35% Clinton 34%

Wisconsin - Trump 39% Clinton 39%

Using the RealClearPolitics averages as guides, Trump leads in Iowa by 0.8 points and Arizona by 2.5 points. Trump trails in Ohio (-3.3), Florida (-2.7), North Carolina (-1.2), Nevada (2.3), Wisconsin (4.0) and Virginia (1.5). A poll in Wisconsin from June was excluded because the data is too old. Two polls in Virginia were excluded because they contain data over three weeks old.

When we apply the latest battleground numbers, we find Trump ahead in Iowa by 1.2 points, trailing in Ohio by 1.75 points and Wisconsin by 2.66 points. When factoring these new numbers, the Ref's battleground index for all battlegrounds shifted from Clinton +2.5 points to Clinton +2.0. The Ref's battleground index in traditionally Republican states changed from Clinton +2.1 to Clinton +1.9.

As an aside, the battleground index does not include states where Trump is leading. The point is to measure how far the person trailing is behind, because that is the measure that actually makes an electoral difference.

The Wall Street Journal ripped Trump in mid-August for running an incompetent campaign. It warned the GOP that "if they can’t get Mr. Trump to change his act by Labor Day, the GOP will have no choice but to write off the nominee as hopeless and focus on salvaging the Senate and House and other down-ballot races." It seems Trump has passed their test. One can imagine that the NeverTrumpers at the WSJ did not expect Trump to actually change his act and move the polls, but he's done just that.

The Ref's Battleground Index

Clinton +2.1 Points in All Ref Battlegrounds (Trump +0.4 from last result)

Clinton +1.9 Points in Traditional GOP States (Trump +0.2 from last result)

What now? NeverTrumpers expected Hillary to hold a commanding lead on Labor Day

Considering that NeverTrumpers want nothing more than to focus only on the Senate and the House and write Trump off, one can imagine that the Wall Street Journal was laying the predicate for doing just that. The NeverTrump theory goes that if Clinton holds a commanding lead, her base will become complacent and opposition to her on the right will mobilize just enough to save Congress. If Trump is close in the polls, as he is, NeverTrumpers argue that fear of a Trump presidency will mobilize Americans to vote in a Democratic congress to offset Trump. If Trump pulls way ahead in the polls, this will cause Americans to almost certainly elect a Democrat House and Senate to oppose him.

First, the NeverTrump theory laid out above concludes that the worst-case scenario is a close race because Republicans are most likely to lose the House in that scenario, in addition to the White House. Nate Silver concludes the contrary, however, that the only way Democrats could win the House and the Senate is a massive Trump loss. Built-in geographic advantages and a decade or more of Republican redistricting virtually guarantee a Republican hold unless Trump loses huge, what NeverTrumpers want. It appears that Silver has the far superior argument based on the facts.

So here we are at Labor Day and it's tied. NeverTrumpers can continue down the irrational path outlined above or the opposite path where support for Trump is much more likely to save the Senate. The House is safe no matter what. We'll see what they conclude this week as this new polls seep into the political psyche.

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CBS released two battleground state polls today, one from Pennsylvania and one from North Carolina. Both polls showed a Clinton lead, +8 in Pennsylvania and +4 in North Carolina. Looks good for Hillary, right? At first blush, yes. But these are just registered voter polls, which always favor Democrats and do not predict the result on election day.

What is surprising about these polls is not their results because they are registered voter polls and registered voter polls always favor Democrats. Even Nate Silver admits this. The most surprising thing about these polls is that they claimed they were likely voter polls, presumably to cause readers to attach the higher level of credibility that comes with the likely voter label.

To my great surprise, in both polls 1100 registered voters were interviewed. And in both polls, the CBS pollster assumed a 99% of registerd voters were likely voters. Apparently almost no registered voters will stay home on election day, astounding accomplishment. Voter turnout was 54.2% in 2000, 60.4% in 2004, 62.3% in 2008 and 57.5% in 2012. Now we can expect a major jump, probably over 90% turnout, if this assumption is correct.

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This is deceptive reporting on a legitimate registered voter poll. Readers associate greater reliability on a likely voter poll, but this was not a likely voter poll. CBS should relabel this poll a registered voter poll to maintain credibility on this.

Check out the screen grabs below from CBS showing that 99% of the registered voters they polled were deemed likely to vote

The Ref's battleground index includes Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire. Those states were included because Trump trailed by four points or less in all of those states, so they are real battlegrounds. Now another state has dropped into that margin, Virginia.

The shift in Virgina seems rather stunning. Only a few days ago, most pundits, including conservative ones, had written the state off. With the last two polls showing a virtual tie, that analysis is out the window. Pennsylvania is also closing, but still sits at a 6.0 point margin for Hillary, so for now, it will remain out of the index.

In Virginia, three of the polls in the RCP average are simply too old, containing no data from the last three weeks. Any data that old in a quickly developing race like this one is simply irrelevant. Taking only data from within the last three weeks, the polling average shows Clinton up only by 1.5 points. An Emerson poll has Clinton up 1 and a Hampton University poll has her up by 2. Emerson receives a B rating from 538, but it does show a slight Republican bias over time. Hampton University also receives a B, but has no bias over time and a 100% race calling percentage. These are solid polls and worth considering.

The margins in the other battlegrounds follow. Trump leads in Iowa by 0.8 points and Arizona by 2.5 points. Trump trails in Ohio (-3.8), Florida (-2.7), North Carolina (-0.5), Nevada (2.3), Wisconsin (4.0) and Virginia (1.5). A poll in Wisconsin from June was excluded because the data is too old. Averaging the states where Trump is behind shows us that Trump is trailing by 2.5 points.

While the overall index is remaining same, +2.5 points for Clinton, Trump has gained flexibility. Trump no longer needs to win states that often go to Democrats. He can now afford to lose Iowa, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, where he is less likely to win by historical standards. He will need to win the states Republicans have won recently, specifically Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada and Arizona, where he trails only by 2.1 points. He can also afford to lose Nevada where he's currently trailing if he wins Iowa, where he's currently leading.

The Ref's Battleground Index

Clinton +2.5 Points in All Ref Battlegrounds

Clinton +2.1 Points in Traditional GOP States

Trump can now focus on bringing Republicans home, an easier task

This shift is significant because Trump can pull into the lead just by bringing Republicans into his tent. He has not been achieving the ninety percent level of Republican support that a GOP candidate typically receives. He has been closer to seventy-five percent. If he can just get a little closer to ninety percent support, he should claim these states that often go GOP. Some of the GOP will naturally come home as we approach election day.

Glenn Beck and the NeverTrumpers are starting to lose their grip. One can easily imagine that we are approaching a tipping point. Once it becomes clear that Trump really can win fairly easily, the argument that Trump will definitely lose so we must abandon him, the primary argument of NeverTrumpers, becomes hollow and ineffectual.

At that point the veneer of concern for the greater good of the GOP disappears and the real motivations of the NeverTrumpers will become manifest. Most of the Trump resistance will dissolve because of a refusal to openly embrace their actual political motivations. Among others, these motivations include blind adherence to globalization, naked political ambition, and sadly, simple bruised egos.

Please follow my new account on Twitter for daily updates on the election!

The conventional wisdom is that Pennsylvania is Trump's surest way to 270. Trump is trailing in the Pennsylvania RCP average by 7.3 points, so quite a few pundits are confidently writing Trump off as a sure loser. The problem with this confidence, however, is that Pennsylvania is not Trump's surest bet. In fact, the Midwest plus Florida and possibly New Hampshire, provides a clearer and currently quite realistic path to 269, the actual number that he needs.

Trump is only trailing by an average of 3.1 points in these states, with the largest lead being five points, but the rest are three points or less. So we're not talking unrealistic scenarios. Here it is.

Trump loses Pennsylvania but wins Florida and Ohio; most pundits think it's over. But that's wrong. Actually, it's not even close to over in that situation. Here are some very realistic scenarios for a Trump win without winning Pennsylvania.

First, Trump must win Ohio (-3.8), Florida (-2.7) and North Carolina (-0.5), which he's very close in those states. Next, he must win Nevada and Arizona. He's currently ahead in Arizona in the RCP by 2.5 points, but he's trailing in Nevada by 2.3 points. Last, he must win in Iowa in and Wisconsin. He is only behind by 1.5 points in Iowa, but by 4 points in Wisconsin. I threw out the poll that RCP is including in Wisconsin from June because that's a really old poll. So he's only down four according to an average of recent Marquette and Monmouth polls there.

Combining those state averages where he trails (OH, FL, NC, NV, IA, WI), Trump is only trailing by 2.5 points. He is trailing nationally by 3.9 points according to the four-way race polls, 1.5 points higher than this state average. This gap is significant because it demonstrates that Hillary's massive leads in California and the big cities could be giving her a national lead that may not produce an electoral victory.

The Ref's Index - Clinton +2.5 Points

Trump does not need Pennsylvania

So what if Trump loses one of these states? Still not a problem, depending on which state he loses and if he wins all five electoral votes out of Nebraska, which I assume he will. Trump can lose Iowa, Nevada or Wisconsin, but only one of those, and still win the presidency with 269 electoral votes. This is true because the Republicans are almost certain to retain the House, and the House breaks an electoral tie. Unless Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg have serious dirt on Speaker Ryan, Trump would win in that scenario.

By winning all the states in this group,Trump ends up at 275 electoral votes. So he can lose Iowa's six electoral votes and win with 269. He can lose Nevada's six electoral votes and still win with 269. If he loses Wisconsin, he would need to win in New Hampshire, which is quite realistic, and still win with 269 electoral votes. New Hampshire's RCP average is pretty sketchy right now. It contains two polls that came during Clinton's bounce, a bounce we know is gone now based on the national numbers, but also has a poll with the two nearly tied just before the conventions. I suspect the race is probably close to tied again, but we need to new polling in that state to know.

So if Trump can close the gap in the national four-way race down to within one point behind Hillary, this analysis suggests he's got a chance because this index of battleground states is a point and a half closer than that national average. Pennsylvania just doesn't matter nearly as much as we think it does. There was an Emerson poll showing him only down three points in Pennsylvania, however, so don't count him out there just yet. But if he wins Pennsylvania, it would just be the icing on the cake. Follow my new Twitter account for daily tracking of the states that really matter!

Registered Voter Polls Favor Democrats Because Many Register but do not Vote

Now to the results of the latest poll. The last poll found that Hillary Clinton was ahead of Trump by thirteen points, a very large lead. Certainly that result was outside of credibility, but we can use it to judge the current poll.

The poll released this week showed a seven-point lead for Hillary, so we see that he has cut Hillary's lead in half. That is consistent with other polling. The problem, however, is that Monmouth's result for registered voters mirrored exactly the results it found for likely voters after it applied it's likely voter screen. This really should not happen much if at all.

The reason this is a red flag is that registered voter polls almost always favor Democrats. When a screen for likely voters is applied, it almost always gives the Republican a bump and the Democrat a drop. This is true because more registered Democrats stay home than do registered Republicans. Democrats are very good at registering voters, but registering them is only part of the battle.

Simply put, Democrats are less likely to actually turn out and vote. So many of the people Democrats are able to register in voter registration drives, like students for example, do not end up voting. Even though they do not vote, their answers are included in a registered voter poll, and that results in a bump for the Democrat that will not materialize on election day. Nate Silver demonstrates this exact bias using stats on his website. There's really no doubt that registered voter polls favor Democrats.

So because registered voter polls favor Democrats, one should wonder when the likely voter screen results in a +7 margin for Clinton, the same as the registered voter poll margin of +7 for Clinton. What Monmouth is telling us is that this election is different from all the others where Democrats were less likely to turn out. There's no reason to believe that is true this time around, especially considering that Republicans have registered more new people and had record turnout in its primaries.

Reuters/Ipsos released a poll last week that was widely reported as indicative of a commanding Clinton lead. It showed Hillary up by twelve points. Wow, the race is over, right? Wrong, because this week, after only a mere seven days, Trump has cut that lead by almost sixty percent, now down to a five-point margin. And when they include all the candidates running, including Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, you know, like the actual ballot will, the lead is only three points.

What changed in that time to make such a dramatic difference? Well certainly a good deal happened. Trump has softened his stance on deportation, Clinton went extreme with racial slurs toward Trump, and the AP released its analysis showing that half of all Clinton's official meetings were with donors to the Clinton Foundation. Hmmm, stinks pretty bad.

So are these developments enough to move seven percent of the population? That's a huge swing and this electorate is polarized and hardened, so, of course not. The truth is that Hillary was never up by twelve points. Nor is she up by ten points now and she has certainly never led by fifteen points. All of these leads were reported breathlessly by the media campaign to elect Hillary Clinton. As an aside, the Quinnipiac poll showing a ten-point lead did not release the party identifications of its respondents, a sure sign that it oversampled Democrats.

The Four-Way Race Polls are the Only Polls that Matter

These very large Clinton leads are fictions of the pollsters, created by pitting Clinton and Trump head-to-head, not offering the Libertarian and Green Party candidates as options and doing everything they can to put each likely voter into a category. In an imaginary pollster world where only two choices exist and every likely voter actually turns out to vote for only one of two candidates, Hillary would win big. This margin is the result of the media and pop culture war on Trump. When middle of the roaders don't favor either candidate, they will lean toward the one that leads to less scorn if forced to do so.

But that's not reality. In America, nobody is forced to vote. A greater than normal number will almost certainly stay home in 2016. There will also be other options on the ballot. If you have a Facebook account, you likely have witnessed the passion of Libertarians and Greens convinced they can make a difference this time around. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein will receive a big chunk of the vote collectively, as polling currently reflects. So why do pollsters not include them in every question?

Well there is some value in measuring the head-to-head in a normal election, where supporters of third parties usually break for one of the two big parties toward the end, but that's not likely to happen in 2016. As Nate Silver points out, dislike for the major party candidates is record breaking. Many middle of the roaders just don't like either candidate, and likability is a major factor in a presidential vote, and for the first time in a long time, both candidates are intensely disliked by the nation at large.

So we should expect major defections to the third parties this time around. This peculiar 2016 dynamic demonstrates that pollsters should include the third parties in every test, and they should only report the results of the four-way race, not the head-to-head. In reality, the media is doing the exactly opposite, only reporting the head-to-head, and only the most extreme leads for Hillary. So you see, you poor abused Trump supporter, you really do have reason to believe that the media is out to get you and you also have validation for looking only at the the four-way race.

Third Parties will matter in 2016, and the polls should reflect that 

Brexit is a harbinger that the American election is tracking closely> 

There is Almost Certainly a Hidden Trump Vote

There likely is a hidden Trump vote that is not showing up in the polls, probably worth two or three points, but maybe as much as five or six points. If you doubt this, you have to look no further than the Brexit vote for evidence. The establishment attacked Brexit in the same way it is attacking Trump, with charges of racism, ignorance and constant polls showing a Brexit loss. But Brexit didn't lose even though most of the final polls showed that it would. Almost every poll showed the Remain side winning, one respected poll by as many as ten points. Yet the the Leave side won by four points. Clearly when the media and pop culture establishment has its favorites, it can create a perception that it is winning. Even supporters of Brexit who wanted Leave expected that they would lose because of the media and celebrity campaign aimed at convincing them they would lose.

So even though Brexit supporters thought they were going to lose, and the polls almost exclusively showed Remain winning comfortably, Brexit won. The same types of themes and players are involved in the American 2016 election as in Brexit. Brexit was considered racist by the establishment because of its focus on British nationalism and wanting to limit immigration. Donald Trump is considered racist by the establishment because of his emphasis on American nationalism and wanting to limit immigration.

Brexit was viewed as protectionist by the establishment, including the Conservative party establishment who exalts completely free trade. Donald Trump is considered protectionist by the establishment, including the conservative establishment who also prize completely free trade above everything, including human rights. The conservative establishments in both nations prefer to ignore the virtually slave labor that Brits and Americans must compete against, all for the sake of "free" trade.

Both nations are also suffering from long-term economic stagnation in the labor market. The labor voter is frustrated in each nation and one can easily imagine workers who typically do not vote turning out to vote with the very targeted approach of the Brexit campaign and Trump. One can also imagine those same people refusing to talk to pollsters who they view as hostile to them.

The media treats Trump in the same way it treated Brexit, as racist, ignorant and protectionist. It heaps poll after poll on us while stridently condemning Trump and all who would even consider voting for him, as they did with Brexit. Some of the same pollsters are finding Trump behind by similar margins as they found Brexit behind, such as Ipsos. In many ways, Brexit and Trump are cousins. We should expect that there is a hidden vote for Trump as there was for Brexit. The average of polls heading into the vote showed Remain winning by two points, although it ultimately lost by four points, a six-point swing. If we apply the same swing to the average of four-way polls in this election, a Clinton four-point lead, we see Trump actually winning by two points. Follow my new Twitter account for daily tracking of the states that really matter!

Glenn Beck has warned that Donald Trump, if elected, will become something akin to a South American dictator and throw out the Constitution. This, mind you, he would do in the face of brutal opposition from 90% of American media, Congress, academia and pop culture. This possibility, in Beck's mind, is a greater threat than Hillary's Court undermining and rewriting the Constitution.

Beck claims his greatest desire politically is to preserve the US Constitution, but considering the extraordinary assumptions and leaps in logic Beck regularly employs to fuel his hatred of Trump, it sure looks much more like a personal vendetta. Glenn Beck paid for the set of the Oval Office from the movie JFK so he and his toadies could sit in it everyday. He also endorsed a candidate in the primaries, Ted Cruz. Beck not only endorsed Cruz, but worked very hard, dedicating time, money and hours of radio time, to electing Cruz. To put it bluntly, he's obsessed with the presidency.

But in Beck's quest to gain easy access to the real Oval Office through Ted Cruz, he lost to Trump, and lost badly. It seems inescapable to conclude that a major component of Beck's opposition to Trump is pure envy and bitterness. Nothing else explains his complete lack of logic when advocating opposition to Trump. He talks about a "hundred year plan," and that his audience will be the "remnant" that saves America. This kind of thinking is either delusional in a western socialist democracy, which we will become if Hillary can pack the Court, or it imagines embracing revolution. If Beck wants a revolution, he should just openly advocate for one, or he should drop this crazy opposition to the only candidate who can save the Court and back Trump. Given Beck's penchant for casual hyperbole when the mood strikes, it is much more likely that this is delusional thinking fueled by bitterness from the loss rather than a call to revolution.

A fair observer could conclude that Beck's behavior, considering its extreme leaps in thinking all serving the purpose of opposing the one who stopped his presidential candidate with whom he had a very close relationship, is indicative of an obsession with the presidency. It is more megalomaniacal than sacrificial or prophetic, as Beck would have you believe.

For Glenn Beck, the risk of Trump becoming a dictator is so great that he is willing to pay the enormous price of giving leftists control of the Supreme Court for decades, and perhaps even a century. That spells the end of our republic.

Maybe this makes sense to Glenn Beck as he sits dreaming in his air-conditioned Oval Office set, marinating in delusions. But to the rest of us conservatives, it's appalling. The following holdings from the Supreme Court would soon follow a Trump loss that Glenn Beck so badly covets.

Immediate implications of a Hillary Court

5-4 cases that would shift in the other direction, immediately

Prayers in any civil context would be banned

Federal government would receive more power to regulate state election processes based on race

Legality of lethal Injection would be imperiled

EPA could set emissions limits with no cost-benefit analysis

Corporations may no longer contribute money in political elections

Company's owned by Christians will be forced to pay for abortion and contraception

Bad decisions that would become permanent

Decision favoring Obamacare subsidies that were not provided for in the law, but invented by the Court

Holding that courts can impose race tests on state legislature redistricting

New Rulings that would fundamentally change America

Guns would be (banned) permitted for official and well-regulated militia's only

Polyandrous Marriage

It seems incredible, but the mainstream media is spinning for Clinton and against Trump in virtually every political report or analysis you see, hear or read. That is no exaggeration. The facts are mere details to incorporate only when it serves the narrative; the rest is just storytelling. Consider Breitbart's powerful condemnation of such dishonest "reporting."

Hillary Clinton's Worst Week--Yet According to MSM, Her Best Week

This race is tightening according to the recent national polls. The media is now pointing to state polls in battleground states, and primarily Pennsylvania. +3 Ohio | +4.5 Florida | +9.2 Pennsylvania. But they fail to mention that Clinton has spent millions in those states and Donald Trump spent his first dollar in any battleground state just this weekend. We must also remember that the Democrats had their convention in Pennsylvania. Trump is close in both Ohio and Florida, within the margin of error, despite the horrible six weeks he had prior to last week. Last, most of these polls are of registered voters, which feature a built in bias towards Democrats. That should be the story, that this really is still a close race. That story will almost certainly emerge in the next couple of weeks as registered voter polls subside, polls that always favor Democrats. The media is going so overboard now, they really risk their credibility with the left and the right. The left just won't trust them because when Trump comes back, as he is doing, they just won't trust their analysis anymore.

The New York Times admits it is biased in this election in this piece, Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism

Breitbart | Lifezette | NY Times | Fox News | Permaink

The Hillary health question is really starting to gain legs. The campaign has responded to it and the liberal media has even shown some interest. Today's contrast feeds this story. Watch in coming days.

Republicans will unite behind this speech.

This speech hit all the right notes. If Trump continues to give these speeches full of substance, bold conservatism with a compelling delivery, one wonders how his movement won't draw in those wary Republicans still lurking out there. If he can solidify the Republican party, Trump at least draws to a tie, but more likely pulls into the lead.

The Real Clear Politics 4-way race average shows a 5.8% lead, but for some reason RCP is including two polls with data that is over two weeks old, both of which still reflect Hillary's bump. Looking only at polls taken in the last week and a half, the lead is 4.4%. That average includes three registered voter polls, which almost always oversample Democrats, as liberal polling guru Nate Silver demonstrates on his website. Because every possible voter has never shown up in any election anywhere in the world, let's knock out the registered voter polls and keep it just to likely voters. Now Trump trails by 3.7%. That's a much closer race than the lying liberal media want you to see, and it's this close with an entire media establishment viciously attacking Trump constantly, a campaign that has been in disarray, and spending zero dollars on advertising. All that is about to change, except the media attack part, so watch out for a Trump bump that will likely stick around.

This is something Hillary Clinton would never do, deliver a major speech at the last minute, sure to be carried live on all three news networks. It is Trump's advantage, and his curse, his ability to perform in compelling ways on live television. If he sticks to a script, that could make all the difference.

It appears to have been a home run, garnering millions of politically minded viewers for nearly an hour on one of the hottest news topics in the land. This kind of thing absolutely can reshape this race.

Trump has certainly hurt himself with ill-advised off-the-cuff remarks, but mostly his presence on the television screen in person and live tends to help him. Hillary, however, tends to fall in the polls when she is in front of the camera. She is working a four-day week of late because of this dilemma. As the election nears, she can't continue to hide. The debates will put her in front of much larger audiences than the conventions. Trump is behind right now, but he's improving and Hillary has to come out of the shadows fairly soon. The media can't do her job forever.

Trump proposed "extreme vetting" of Muslims, including questions testing their commitment to womens' rights, gay rights and religious pluralism

Milo thinks that Trump has outflanked Hillary on gay rights, Donald Trump Just Overtook The Democrats On Gay Rights

Trump likened this approach to the one taken by Reagan during the Cold War, where Russian tourists were heavily scrutinized. So this policy has eclipsed Trump's past proposal on a Muslim ban that has caused controversy, and given him an umbrella under which he can repackage that proposal into a much more palatable and reasonable policy. His suggestion that we ban Muslims has transitioned to a Cold War Reagan type policy on Russian tourists of extreme vetting on the basis of American liberal values. That's a position Republicans, and even NeverTrumpers, can get behind. Further, this speech reiterated his approach on ISIS, that being one that prizes unpredictability, another Reagan hallmark. Dare I say it? Trump is making sense in that he is featuring consistency in his foreign policy, something Hillary rarely does, and something that will win over NeverTrumpers.

Not only does this policy approach leave behind any notion of banning Muslims while adhering to the logical principals behind the ban, it also advances the Republican position on gay rights in a way that all Republicans will unite behind. The most conservative to the most socially liberal Republicans will agree on this approach; conservatives because it offers a way to ferret out dangerous radical extremists and liberals because it protects homosexuals, and that will help Trump enormously over the critical next few weeks. So the speech brought forth a coherent policy that Hillary will almost certainly adopt portions of, probably the questions relating to womens' rights and gay rights, which will highlight those areas where Clinton has copied Trump, reversing some of the damage Trump has done to himself in the last few weeks.

Trump simply needs to talk about these uniting themes every day and abandon the old bluster to turn this election around. The policy is sound and he has had an uncanny ability to make the right calls on foreign policy on the Iraq war and post-war where Hillary has not. When Hillary adopts his approach, that will remind people of this uncanny ability he has demonstrated.

If he just sticks to this script every day without making statements that can be taken out of context and abused, he should bring this race back to parity by the debates. If he can get to even or close to it by the debates, he will almost certainly emerge ahead of Hillary after the debates. The expectations for Trump are so low, it's hard to imagine how he can't exceed them. After the debates, does anyone not expect the rest of the emails to emerge? That's the winning formula for Trump, and it started today. But will he step on it? We'll see.

Trump needs to stick to specific policy proposals that unite Republicans while happily engaging the media that is attempting to destroy him. No more complaining about the media, because everyone knows he's getting a raw deal, so just roll with it. That's how Reagan did it, and Trump has the personality and skill to do the same.

Permalink

Hugh Hewitt, a harsh Trump critic on constitutional and conservatism grounds, pleads with #NeverTrumpers to reconsider their steadfast opposition to Trump. He argues that Trump's conservative list of Supreme Court picks can be relied on because Mitch McConnell can block any nomination that isn't from that list, and he will defend that list.

Read Hugh Hewitt's piece, Once more into the Supreme Court breach

The argument is sound. Not only will Mitch McConnell have an ideological motivation to block any non-list Trump picks to the Court, but he will have a political one as well. The conservative block in the Republican party rules the roost, both in Washington and in McConnell's Kentucky. If Trump were to appoint a person not on the list, or substantially conforming to the principles that shaped the list, and McConnell did not block the nomination, repercussions would be severe for McConnell and the GOP hopes for controlling the Senate. We have every reason to believe Trump appointments will be from the list.

Not only does McConnell have the political and ideological motivations to enforce the Trump list, but he would certainly relish the prospect of garnering the adoration of constitutionalists for his steadfast act of defense of the Constitution in the face of a Trump abandonment of the list. Trump, likewise, will have no reason to abandon the list. His base has been conservative. To abandon this base would be to abandon the presidency, as all hopes of reelection and any support for him in all respects and at all times by the core of his base would blink out.

Why won't #NeverTrumpers 'take "yes" for an answer?' Deroy Murdoch argues in the National Review that #NeverTrumpers ignore Trump's pick for VP, the Supreme Court list, waking up about fundraising, a Reaganesque economic proposal and stopping Obamacare, and are actually supporting the election of Hillary Clinton

See Never Trumpniks Pave Hillary's Path to Power

Certainly close election followers have read and heard many times this election that we have a binary choice. That is not only practically true, effectively true, or essentially true; it is ABSOLUTELY true. We only have two choices. No third party will win the White House. So if one wants to deal in reality on such weighty matters as the future makeup of the Supreme Court, he or she will abandon ridiculous notions designed only to confuse those following the debate. Or worse, these #NeverTrumpers are attempting to push one who would vote for Trump if he or she had full knowledge of the future implications of not voting for him, away from Trump, by pointing to someone designed to appeal to ideological purity or stylistic preferences, who has no chance of winning. It is not too much to suggest that these third and fourth options are stalking horses currently hiding #NeverTrumpers' true desire to elect Hillary Clinton out of pure rage and petty vindictiveness.

Evan McMullin or Gary Johnson simply can't win this election or even a single electoral vote. To vote for them is not only to waste your vote, it is to make a mockery of its importance. Those who make such a choice on grounds of defending the constitution will face a lifetime of gut churning guilt as they see the leftist Court rob our Constitution of its ability to limit political power and rewrite our Constitution from the bench. They will watch their children suffer in a nation that is no longer governed by the rule of law, but leftists whose power is effectively unrestrained when paired with a leftist media and an army of millennial lemmings guided by propagandists on their smart phones.

This list of consequences is horrifying. The right to free education well into adulthood will legally trample any social stigma attached to such prolonged adolescence. The Court, our Supreme Court, will mock and attempt to humiliate anyone who insists on personal responsibility on this front, and idiots at Google and the new media elite will back them up. The Supreme Court will join the likes of Bill Maher as crusading secularists bent on weakening all social pressures to embrace a theistic world-view and any moral framework that follows by labeling such paradigms as bigoted because they disparately impact people who were born gay, AND LITERALLY FOR NO OTHER REASON. Our Supreme Court will become that empty headed pseudo-intellectual preaching to everyone about love and fairness with no thought to practicality or reality. The irony will sicken the constitutionalists as our governing structure will become unmoored as liberal dogooders impose their will through "interpretation," which will really be rewriting of that very Constitution they so prize. How repugnant to them, but it is them we will have to thank.

The cultural war will end, and at its conclusion we will find the radical left victorious, wearing black robes and feeding on our young. Those of you who can't stand Trump will be to blame. By looking at the polls, you are currently making the difference. You should be ashamed and you will be held morally accountable by your fellow conservatives who are not letting blind jealous rage blind us to reality.

Trump's Newest Defender - This is about the survival of the "basic structure" of the republic

Mitch McConnell is the ultimate Trump card for conservatives in Donald Trump Supreme Court appointments

Despite every reason to do so, the stalking horse #NeverTrumpers seem unable to let go of their rage

The latest batch of Marist poll numbers in key battleground states look bad for Trump, but let's look closer at those numbers. First, the results.

PA: 48 Clinton. 37 Trump. MOE +/-3.4.

OH: 43 Clinton. Trump 38. MOE +/-3.3.

IA: 41 Clinton. Trump 37. MOE +/-3.3.

Why these results are not really as bad as you think for Trump.

Well in Iowa and Ohio Trump is within the margin of error, so that's not so bad, considering that Trump has had an avalanche of hostile media, in part brought on by himself. But wait, the lead for Clinton is 5 in Ohio and 4 in Iowa, both of which are larger than the 3.3% margins of error? No, that's wrong, and it's a mistake most journalists reporting on these stories make. The +/- signs before the margin of error indicate that you must add or subtract the margin of error, 3.3 in this case, to each result. So it is possible that you add 3.3 to Trump's result in Iowa, getting 40.3, and subtract 3.3 from Clinton's result in Iowa, or 37.7, to show Trump actually leading by 2.6 points. Same for Ohio. So anytime a poll is within the margin of error, it can reasonably be interpreted as a toss up, especially when one candidate has received very bad coverage recently that is likely to subside.

But in Pennsylvaina, Trump's numbers are not good. He would almost certainly lose Pennsylvania if the election were held today among ALL REGISTERED VOTERS. But no election anywhere in the world sees all registered voters turn out. Pollsters who want to save a little money will poll all registered voters. They don't have to call as many people this way, because when they determine who is actually likely to vote, they realize a lot of people are going to stay home and they have to call another two or three thousand people.

Another possible reason that a media organization might report a poll of all registered voters, instead of likely voters, is that Democrats almost always do better among all registered voters. That is because Democrats are almost always less likely to turn out and vote than Republicans.

These poll numbers show Trump down in a bad media cycle, but they also don't show Clinton at, above or even near 50 in a good media cycle for her.

Clinton, if she really had a commanding lead, would be at 50% in these polls. The fact that she can't get 50% in a registered voter poll, means her normal pool of potential Democratic voters is definitely smaller than normal for a Democrat. If Trump can just stop saying things the media stops finding so outrageous, he will naturally bounce back to a lead and Iowa and Ohio and probably and a tie among LIKELY voters in Pennsylvania. Clinton is a 48 in PA, but that only means among all POSSIBLE voters, she is getting 48% in a good media cycle. She will likely not have a good media cycle on election day becuase of a likely October surprise, which means her actual pool is more like 45%. With the natural inferior turnout of Democrats and the Democrat's lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, this race is still one Hillary can easily lose.

Highlights of the Interview

Full Interview

According to this preacher, Trump has been searching for God for at least fourteen years. Trump may very well be emphasizing his brash side as a matter of strategy. The play is simple. His personality and brashness become the focus of the entire campaign. He monopolizes the media coverage, though often in a negative way. This goes on for weeks. Then the moment, Trump schedules a Megyn Kelly special on Fox broadcast and comes clean, admitting the mistakes and asking for forgiveness, with his personal spiritual advisor of fourteen years by his side. At that point, about the time Hillary will be hit with more emails showing that she was in fact trading American diplomatic policy and actions for personal wealth.

Before you dismiss this theory out of hand, consider the benefits of such a strategy. It takes the focus off of policy details, a Trump weakness, for many weeks. It keeps the a very large number of people interested in the election, which helps him because he wants to pull voters that don't normally vote. Last, it gives him almost complete control of the election news cycle. He can go out, make a brash statement to dominate the news for a few days, knowing all the while he will make amends with the truth of his viewpoint later on. Just saying, it makes some sense. And remember, it only has to work with Republicans to make the difference.

Joint FBI-US Attorney Probe Of Clinton Foundation Is Underway

What's In Hillary's Deleted Emails? Here Are 5 Theories.

Trump Frenzy Proves Media Need Xanax

Watching the liberal media lose their minds over Donald Trump's comments has been disheartening, but also rather humorous becuase of the extreme nature of their reaction. They have taken a point from the Democratic stategy, to make Trump look violent, and have run with it. Don Lemon dutifully parroted the Democratic talking point, that Trump is violent, and acted shocked that anyone would disagree. As he explained what a talking point is, Don demonstrates that he is just spouting liberal media talking points. When it's pointed out that the media said nothing about Obama's comparing Republicans to terrorists, he sighs, obviously realizing his own bias.

Media Freaks When Donald Trump Jokes About the Second Amendment, Stays Silent When HIS Life Is Threatened

3 Justice Department Field Offices Wanted to Investigate The Clinton Foundation. The DOJ Refused Anyway.

Loretta Lynch’s Justice Dept. Declined FBI Request To Investigate Clinton Foundation

We have open corruption in our political system that the media knows about and won't talk about. That makes the media corrupt. When a nation has corrupt media, we are not far from losing our freedoms. It really is this bad.

Clinton Image Source

Assange suggests DNC involvement in a murder related to DNC email leaks

In case you hadn't noticed, the press is abolutely trashing Trump, over and over again, in an attempt to stop Trump from winning. Those engaging in such poltically motivated action put down their journalistic roles and fill the role of a political operative. Should Democrats crusading against Trump in the disguise of journalists be challenged? Yes. So as citizens, we must challenge these journalists wherever it is possible. Send a Tweet, or a hundred Tweets. Keep posting on Facebook. These are means of poltical influence that can neutralize a hostile media.

Media Freaks When Donald Trump Jokes About the Second Amendment, Stays Silent When HIS Life Is Threatened

It looks like the bounce for Hillary is starting to go away. We should know for sure in about two weeks.

Can Trump catch up? It seems to come down to whether he is willing to soften his image and act "less impulsive and more focussed"

 For Trump supporters looking for some hope, here ya go! He's basically tied in Ohio and Florida, but is trailing by ten points in Pennsylvania. Clinton is not over 50% in Pennsylvania, however, and it's also the worst point in the election cycle for Trump. So if he can gain back some of the Republicans he has lost, and that is likely to happen, he can win. Hillary will bleed support as Trump ads go up and more emails continue to drip out. This is her high-water mark, no doubt, and shes under 50%.

Remember also that Trump has not spent a dime on advertising in any of these three states. Hillary has spent a fortune. Once he does, that will get him a few points. Also, the media attack will have to relent becuae it can't possibly sustain at this level. Even their partisans are getting a little uneasy about the level of sheer unfairness. We are American afterall, and Americans don't like rigged outcomes. Not to mention that Trump has built his campaign on the assumption that the media will do this.. Last, Trump will likely avoid hostile interviews and stay more on script. All of these things will combine to transform this race back to competitive.

As much as NBC tries to make these numbers look good for Hillary, they still show Trump very close to Hillary in all but Pennsylvania. Trump is down eleven in PA, but that's where the Democrats had their convention, so you have to figure the bounce is more pronounced there.

Honestly, it's really just not that bad for Trump right now. These polls paint a picture of a close race considering this is just after the Democratic convention.