Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

None of those are properly accounting for early voting.

Those states are completely gone. there is no battle left

 

Harry Enten of 538 has acknowledged their models don't use early voting. Doesn't mean they're wrong, but it's kind of a big data point to leave out.

 

Colorado is probably the best example of 538's huge blind spot.

In 2012, Republicans had a registered voter advantage there and led slightly in early voting, but Obama won the state by a little more than 5 points.

In the following four years, Democratic voter registration soared there to the point where they had an advantage in total registered voters for the first time.

Half of the expected total vote has already been cast in Colorado, and this is the first time Democrats are outnumbering Republicans there in early voting.

So we have a state that Obama won comfortably, that got noticeably more blue since he won it comfortably, and where Clinton is ahead of Obama's pace at the halfway point.

Because of all this, the campaigns have given it only perfunctory attention and abandoned it as a battleground. Because of that, it has been very lightly polled.

The 538 model doesn't see anything but that last part. It sees "blue last time, but pretty lightly polled so who really knows?" and marks it as a swing state.

It isn't.

 

Hillary Clinton’s name misspelled on Lonoke County ballot

 

The rush is on to stage an Ivanka intervention.

 

This is anecdotal as all hell, but I'm going full "dog that didn't bark." I have a friend whom I'm in daily contact with via a small-ish email chain who's high up on Hillary's foreign policy team. (You wouldn't know his name, but she knows him personally.) Even amid all the bizarre tightening of the polls and the crazy email news, I've not seen any sign of concern from him, whether on the email chain or on social media. Like I said, anecdotal as hell, but I'm taking that to mean everything will be cool come Tuesday.

 

I'm sure that was a complete accident.

 

Speaking of antecdotals ...

My dad is a die-hard conservative. Recently went to see Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller speak live and paid extra to attend the meet-and-greet afterward. Two weeks ago, he said he just couldn't vote for Trump. Couldn't stand the guy. Was likely going to vote for Evan McMullin or leave that part of the ballot blank.

Spoke to him last night. He told me that he voted early and voted for Trump. Disappointed, I had to ask why. He said, with resignation in his voice, "I just don't want Hillary to win."

My dad is a very smart and reasonable man. He didn't want to vote for Trump. He was truly disgusted by the things he has said and agrees he has no idea what he's talking about policy wise. But when it came time to vote, he fell in line with the party.

 

I didn't mean that it's true, but we're kind of in a silly season at this point. We've his a spot where the existence of Clinton emails is seen in some circles as a game-changer. Shoot, less-than-half-truths have been getting traction all cycle.

 

New L.A. Times tracking poll has Trump up +5. The new Rasmussen has him up +3. I know those are Republican-leaning polls, but they still have indicated swings in the electorate, relatively speaking.

In sports, we call this "peaking at the right time."

 

That's a patriot right there.

 

For 25 years, the Clintons have pounded into our heads that what you do in your personal life doesn't matter. Well, now you have a candidate who is a heel, personally, and a candidate who perception is has violated the public trust, repeatedly, in her official roles. Clinton is struggling to close because, in part, people are taking her and her husband's long-time advice on evaluating candidates.