Hanging Tough
Why we've made only minor changes to our Electoral College ratings since March
Larry J. Sabato, Director, UVA Center for Politics - August 4th, 2016
On March 31, we released our first general election map of the Electoral College. With our self-imposed rule of permitting no cop-out “toss-ups” — a rule we’ll try to hold to as we handicap this year’s Electoral College map — our bottom-line totals were 347 electoral votes for Hillary Clinton and 191 for Donald Trump. We’ve made modest changes since: Pennsylvania has morphed from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic, while Virginia — after Tim Kaine was added to the Democratic ticket — went the other way from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic. Arizona and Georgia went from Likely Republican to Leans Republican, and usually reliable Utah from Safe Republican to Likely Republican.
But the total has remained 347 D to 191 R.
Today we add one further alteration: We are moving Colorado from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic. This also does not affect the Electoral College total, though it does push a competitive state further toward Clinton. Public and private polling, plus our own survey of key Democrats, Republicans, and independent journalists suggests that the GOP is not very competitive in Colorado this year. That includes the Senate race too, which we are moving from Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic. Sen. Michael Bennet (D), a very close winner in 2010, should be able to run ahead of Clinton against an underfunded Republican opponent, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, who national Republicans appear to have written off.
Are there complications? Naturally. While we suspect support for the Libertarians and Greens will diminish as Election Day approaches, we cannot know this for certain. It is at least possible that the Clinton-Trump balance will be upset by Gary Johnson and/or Jill Stein. We’ll keep watching, especially in the unlikely circumstance that Johnson makes it into the fall debates (he’ll need to be averaging 15% in several national polls to be included, and right now he’s generally in the high single digits).
Whether Johnson is present or not, the debates always offer an opportunity for one candidate to shine or another to make a costly gaffe, though here’s where intense partisanship matters again. Voters can easily declare one candidate the debate winner but cling to their preference for the other contender. There is also enough time from the end of the last debate (Oct. 19) to the election (Nov. 8) for lingering debate effects to vanish.
We certainly aren’t denying that certain events could upend all predictions. A surprise recession (few if any predicted the September 2008 economic collapse, even a couple of months’ out) or terrible instances of domestic terrorism in the fall might cause just enough voters to throw up their hands and say, “Enough. We need a change even if we don’t much like the change!”
It’s essential to note that the love-hate feelings for Trump and Clinton are eye-popping, and this unusual factor may distort expectations. Trump in particular is such an outlier or aberration that many standard election models by political scientists may not be able to project the election results as well as they usually do.
excerpted
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/hanging-tough/
