So there has been a new poll dump this morning…. and there is good news and bad news. The good news is that new national polls still have Clinton maintaining an edge over Trump. The bad news has Trump beating Clinton in battleground states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. This is no Rasmussen fart either, but polls by the highly-respected Quinnipiac firm, a polling firm that has an A- from Nate Silver.
People have been trying to tear apart the Quinnipiac poll in fear, but the fact is that Quinnipiac is acting exactly like a poll should. Hillary Clinton has had a terrible couple of weeks. She was entirely discredited by the FBI investigation who basically said she straight-up lied about e-mails. While the FBI refused to indict Clinton, it didn’t seem to do any good concerning her popularity among voters. Even liberal commentators like Larry Wilmore from "The Nightly Show" and Trevor Noah from "The Daily Show" and MSNBC has been tearing apart Clinton. The GOP has been hammering on this all week and the media, unfortunately, has been working lock-step with them. Trump university, a Trump-perpetrated scam that ruined lives and blatantly broke the law concerning fraud, has disappeared from the headlines. Only “USA Today,” usually not an ally for the Democrats, has been bravely keeping Trump’s law-breaking in the headlines, literally. Their "Trump and the Law" expose has been going on for weeks now and is probably a large reason why Clinton’s fall in the polls isn’t steeper than it is already.
Other hits against Clinton has been the deaths of five Dallas officers and widespread protests by the “Black Lives Matter.” This has made American voters nervous about racial fault lines, the possible return of race riots that plagued the sixties, and overall security. When people get nervous about security, they tend to vote for the GOP over the Democrats… and they DEFINITELY gravitate towards male leaders over female leaders. While there has been good news for Hillary Clinton such as a good economic and jobs report for the month of July and an endorsement by Bernie Sanders… that news has been entirely stepped on by the Dallas shooting. Also bad for the Hillary is that Trump has delivered two speeches on “Law and Order” and veterans and has managed to make these speeches without his dick falling out of his pants. Trump has finally started taking his marching orders. When Justice Ginsburg blasted Trump, the GOP nominee refused to name call and instead used more adult, political words like “inappropriate.” No “goofy Ruth Bader Ginsburg” here.
So I believe these polls and they make me nervous. On the other hand, the new Quinnipiac polls make me confident that Hillary will win 2016. “Why?” you may ask. Because the Quinnipiac polls are behaving EXACTLY like polls should in reaction to recent public events. These polls are correct. No nasty “Brexit”-style surprises for us on election day. When Clinton is shown to be ahead, Clinton is probably ahead. No noise there. If polls had held firm for Clinton despite recent disasters for the Clinton campaign, I’d be a bit suspicious. "Really? No change at all? I know Trump is despised, but you'd think there'd be SOME movement."
Polls sometimes leap ahead for Republican candidates when the Democratic candidate screws up, even during a general election year. After a horrible debate performance against Mitt Romney in 2012, Obama dropped badly in polls and was basically polling behind Romney during the month of October, 2012. OCTOBER! Not July, but October! Bad time to be neck-and-neck. Luckily the Obama coalition and Obama’s truly formidable election team pulled out a win. And that team is going to be 100% behind Hillary during this election.
Nate Silver, who trusts math- not opinions- still puts Hillary as the favorite during this election. Let’s trust the polls and the math here, because both are behaving exactly as they should.