Clinton Lead Still Strong Over Weekend

Ken AshfordElection 2016, PollsLeave a Comment

Halfway through law week, Donald Trump seemed to have gotten the message that his attacks on the Khans was costing him in the polls.  He tightened up.  He started reading more from a script at rallies.  He endorsed Ryan and McCain and Ayotte.

That stopped the poll plunge.  But it doesn’t look like it turned the boat around.

Today, Trump is to give a major policy speech, also known as “Trump to Awkwardly Read Off TelePrompTer Set of Positions He Does Not Care About Because They Are Not About How Great He Supposedly Is.”  He is coming out with an economic plan which, by all accounts, is pure Republicanism.  Tax breaks for the corporations and the wealthy.  Scaling back financial regulations. And it doesn’t add up (it creates huge deficits).

The plan also contains childcare tax deduction, not expanded child-related credits. That’s a bone to the middle class (and upper middle class).  The deduction won’t affect the poor because their income (and hence, their taxes) are too low for the deduction to make a difference.

And repealing the “death tax”.  Can’t be a Republican plan without that.

But it is, no question, a *plan* — and that alone makes it unusual for the Trump campaign.

Also, the nation’s focus will be on the Olympics for a while.  People get back into politics mode again on Labor Day, when we gear up for the debates.

So where are we? Clinton is still enjoying a post-convention bounce, or perhaps this is a post-Trump-gaffe plummet.  She has strong numbers in both national and state polling released this weekend:

  • A new ABC News/Washington Post national poll published on Sunday showed Clinton up 8 percentage points among registered voters. Clinton’s lead jumped 4 points compared to the previous ABC News/Washington survey, conducted before the conventions.
  • A Morning Consult poll, also published Sunday, also found Clinton up 8 points among registered voters. Clinton was up 5 percentage points in the same poll last weekend, conducted after both conventions. That is, Clinton’s post-convention surge has continued in Morning Consult’s polling.
  • Two national tracking polls which have generally shown good numbers for Trump also found Clinton building or holding onto her post-convention bounce. Clinton led by 1 percentage point in the latest USC Dornsife/LA Times survey, and by 6 points in the CVOTER International poll — both matching her largest leads from those pollsters.
  • The only poll showing any real sign of decay in Clinton’s lead is the Ipsos tracking poll, which had Clinton up 2 percentage points as of Friday, down a few points from earlier in the week. For now, it is an outlier, and most polls have Clinton’s bounce holding or expanding.

The newest state polls have been a little more mixed for Clinton, but they basically tell the same story:

538.com (Nate Silver) says she  is an 83-percent favorite to win on Nov. 8, according to their polls-only model. Their polls-plus model — which accounts for the “fundamentals,” as well as the tendency for a candidate’s numbers to temporarily rise after his or her convention — gives her a 76 percent chance.

And…

So this all looks good.  And…. hello…. what’s this?

Evan McMullin, the former chief policy director for the House Republican Conference, will launch an independent presidential bid, according to his campaign website. Several media outlets reported his bid early on Monday morning. “In a year where Americans have lost faith in the candidates of both major parties, it’s time for a generation of new leadership to step up,” McMullin said in a statement to ABC. “It’s never too late to do the right thing, and America deserves much better than either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton can offer us. I humbly offer myself as a leader who can give millions of disaffected Americans a conservative choice for President.”

Better for America, the group that is allegedly facilitating McMullin’s run,“will likely have to sue to get on the ballot” in some states.

On Monday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said on Twitter that McMullin has “the backing of key $$ contributors in the Republican Party,” citing sources. Nate Hodson, a spokesman for the House Republican Conference, released a statement, saying, “the House Republican Conference has zero knowledge of his intentions.” An aide added that McMullin no longer works for the conference.

Well, at least NeverTrump Republicans have a place to put their vote.  I’m not sure he’ll be a big factor unless he really gets serious money in campaign contributions.  But if he does, it only works to Hillary’s benefit. Trump would be smart to NOT EVEN MENTION the guy right now.

UPDATE:  Here’s Trumps *prepared* remarks:

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