Good Polling News For Republicans, Even Trump
By Dan McLaughlin — September 14, 2016
Whatever you think is the true state of the presidential race, this much is clear: the last few weeks’ polls have been better news for Donald Trump than the mid-July to mid-August polls. But those same polls have continued the trend we have seen all year: Trump is still dragging behind other, more normal Republican candidates, and the ultimate question is whether they can pull him up or he will pull them down. In the GOP’s favor, there remains a powerful and unanimous historical trend for the party in power to lose support in the presidential race following an incumbent re-election, and it takes a remarkably bad candidate to buck that trend.
Polling always comes with its share of hazards, and the two big ones in the presidential race this year are (1) whether pollsters should be including Gary Johnson and Jill Stein (third party candidates historically tend to underperform their polls unless they reach a critical mass of support, and Stein at last check is still 8 states short of being on all 50 states’ ballots) and (2) projecting what kind of turnout the Trump campaign can expect with an amateur and severely understaffed ground game. So while we know the basic trends that are screamingly obvious in every poll (Hillary is very unpopular, Trump is even more unpopular, but both will draw a fair number of nose-holding votes), almost everything we think we know about this election from the data should be taken with big grains of salt.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/node/440054/print
