Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Here's an informative U.S. electoral map from TPM

Today TPM announced the debut of its 2016 Electoral Scoreboard. The map allows a user to hover over and click through on each state for updated polling data that reveals the state of the race on any given day. The data is provided by PollTracker, the poll aggregating service that proved to be the most accurate of any of its kind in 2012.

You'll see that the current state of the Electoral College on this map heavily favors Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Keep in mind that this reflects polling data coming directly after the Democratic National Convention, a point in the election cycle where it would figure to be favorable to Clinton after the expected polling bounce following four days of orchestrated positive programming touting the Democratic message.

By most accounts, the race is predicted to tighten during the final three months of the campaign, with the debates now looming as the events that will have the largest impact of any other presently planned occurrence.

The colors of the states on the map are as follows:

  • Dark blue (strongly Clinton, 10 percent polling lead or more)
  • Light blue (favors Clinton, between 5 and 9 percent polling lead)
  • Lightest blue (lean Clinton, between 2 and 4 percent polling lead)
  • Off-white (Toss-up, between -2 and +2 percent in polling)
  • Lightest red (lean Trump, between 2 and 4 percent polling lead)
  • Light red (favors Trump, between 5 and 9 percent polling lead)
  • Dark red (strongly Trump, 10 percent polling lead or more)

Monday, August 1, 2016

Nate Silver: Larger convention bounce for Clinton

New data collected since the end of both conventions suggest Hillary Clinton currently leads Donald Trump by mid- to high-single digits, according to Nate Silver's analysis at FiveThirtyEight.

Additionally, Silver's forecast model that predicts the percentage chance of which candidate will win the presidency in November today sits at 63.3% for Clinton compared to 36.7% for Trump.

Both the forecast model and the polling numbers will change over time. The Free Press will check in and report on significant developments from now until Election Day, now less than 100 days away.

Below are some specific data representing the most recent national polling used by Silver in his updated analysis:
  • A CBS News poll has Clinton ahead by 5 percentage points, in the version of the poll that includes third-party candidates (which is the version FiveThirtyEight uses). Trump led Clinton by 1 point in a CBS News poll conducted just after the RNC, so that would count as a 6-point bounce for Clinton.
  • A Morning Consult poll also showed Clinton up by 5 percentage points, representing a 9-point swing toward her from a poll they conducted last week after the RNC.
  • A RABA Research national poll, conducted on Friday after the convention, has Clinton with a 15-point lead. RABA Research’s national poll has been something of a pro-Clinton outlier. Still, the trend in the poll is favorable for Clinton. She’d led Trump by 5 percentage points in RABA Research’s poll just after the RNC, meaning that she got a 10-point bounce.
  • Finally, a Public Policy Polling survey has Clinton up by 5 percentage points. Because PPP did not conduct a post-RNC poll, we can’t directly measure Clinton’s bounce. But their previous national poll, in late June, showed Clinton up by 4 percentage points. Therefore, their data tends to confirm our notion that the conventions may have reset the race to approximately where it was in June, which was a strong month of polling for Clinton.