First Polls -- Guess What They Say?

I suppose that, as long as you don't depend on Facebook for your news (and I manage to turn 65 today without having a Facebook account), you might have actually heard that there was some polling data announced yesterday morning in the presidential race in a few key states.  The polls matched presumptive nominees Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the assumption being that she won't be in prison at that point.

I heard that there were polls, before I actually heard what they found.  I guess I figured that, at this stage, Hillary would be leading by a bunch, and that gap would close over the time between now and election day.  That's what I figured.

Of course, as with many things, I guessed a bit wrong.  The polls covered three states of interest, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.  I'm not exactly sure why Pennsylvania was part of the discussion, as it was not really a contended state in recent elections.  It's not reliably blue in the sense that it does elect Republicans as governors and U.S. senators, but in the presidential elections it has not been giving its votes to Republicans.

However, and in some contrast with my expectation, both Florida and Pennsylvania polled out at 43-42 for Hillary, which is obviously a margin-of-error tie, in the released poll (which was done by Quinnipiac, to place credit).  Ohio polled 43-39 for Trump.  That is less-obviously in the margin of error, but still within it.

What do we make of that?  First, we all know that the conventional wisdom and, for that matter, recent history, tell us that Ohio and Florida are pretty much the sine qua non for winning the election.  Taking all the blue and red states out of the equation, that's about where it comes down to, along with New Mexico, Nevada and New Hampshire, which are much less populous states.

Ohio and Florida -- not Pennsylvania.

If I'm Hillary, I do not like that poll one bit, and Quinnipiac is not exactly a particularly biased polling organization.  She won't like it for a few reasons, and they include these:

- Pennsylvania is now "in play", and that's a whole lot of electoral votes that she would have assumed were just going to sail into her column (and a lot more money she needs to spend in a place she wasn't expecting to).
- Ohio is already 43-39 the wrong way for her.  Ohio is not exactly a huge coal state, but it is certainly more sympathetic to coal miners, in that its economic recovery has been faster than most states because of energy development.
- Florida is even and, as 2000 showed, you don't want that state to be close.
- If Pennsylvania is now in play, it is for a reason, and that same reason could apply to a few other states as well -- perhaps not New York, which is Trump's home far more than Hillary's, but very possibly Michigan, Wisconsin and Virginia.

Most concerning of all for her, though, is the fundamental difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as candidates.  That is this -- as a candidate, we know about everything there is to know, or that we will know, about Hillary Clinton.  We know it partly because she is in the public eye and has been for decades, although only relatively recently as an actual government official.  More to the point, we know it because she spent years in the Obama Administration as a Cabinet official, and the voter will pretty typically assume that Hillary will be four more years of that, if she is not in prison by then.

We know exactly nothing about Donald Trump, government official.  I mean, I'm going to vote for the guy and at this moment I don't know what he will be like as president.  There is seriously nothing he is going to do between now and election day that will get me to vote for Hillary, but anything bad enough to get me not to vote for him, is probably bad enough to get him off the ticket entirely.

What does that mean?  It means that those Quinnipiac polls are far more likely to be the floor of Trump's support than the ceiling.  Who is going to change their mind about Hillary at this point?  We know everything we're going to know, except on what charges she will actually be indicted (or, conversely, how many dozen career dedicated FBI agents resign in protest if she is not indicted).

I didn't see those polls coming, and I think it will be interesting to see what other states look like and if they appear to be polling in a similar manner (i.e., a bit more Trump-favorable than would have been expected of that state at this moment).  I simply believe that, whatever you think of him, it is far, far more likely between now and November that people who were not going to vote for him decide that they will, rather than for those who are now planning to vote for him to decide not to.

Trump has upside.  Hillary has familiarity, and way too much of it.  She has nowhere to go but down, and she can't like the place she'd be falling from.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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