Yesterday, it seems that Trump (and everybody else) got past the Khan story, and much of what was discussed was the “intervention” story, wherein GOP leaders (or maybe Trump’s staff) sit down with Trump and get him to pivot to the general election instead of going full-blown tinfoil hat.
Intervention or not, Trump held to rallies yesterday and a couple of local news interviews which veered closer to sanity than anything else Trump has said or done int the past couple days.
Today, with more polls coming in, we get a real clear idea of the post-convention damage.
Last night, we got a preview, with a Fox News poll putting Clinton up by 10 points.
Worse for Trump were some state polls that came in this morning. Clinton up 9 in Michigan. Clinton up 15 in the small swing state of New Hampshire. And Clinton up 11 in the important swing state of Pennsylvania (among likely voters).
Those are bad numbers. They show that if the election was held today, it would be a Clinton blowout.
BUT…. the election isn’t being held today.
Now, most believe there is an equilibrium, a point where, absent significant events (like a debate or convention or scandal or major faux pas), one candidate resides in relation to another. Many have floated that equilibrium as +5 Clinton, nationally. That sounds about right to me. So I expect Clinton’s lead to come down a little, assuming nothing happens in the interim.
But maybe that equilibrium point has changed. As new numbers come in today, we’ll see.
UPDATE — And her come the bad numbers.
Another big swing state….
Clinton leads in FL Suffolk Univ poll of likely voters, 48%-42%
— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) August 4, 2016
Sidenote: Both the NH and Pennsylvania polls show that Trump’s slide down hurts the GOP senators of those states running for re-election.