Clinton enjoys solid lead in early voting

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-idUSKCN12T0J6

Clinton enjoys solid lead in early voting: Reuters/Ipsos poll

By Maurice Tamman | NEW YORK


With 11 days to go before the U.S. presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leads Republican Donald Trump by 15 percentage points among early voters surveyed in the past two weeks, according to the Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation project.

Though data is not available for all early voting states, Clinton enjoys an edge in swing states such as Ohio and Arizona and in Republican Party strongholds such as Georgia and Texas.

An estimated 19 million Americans have voted so far in the election, according to the University of Florida’s United States Election Project, accounting for as much as 20 percent of the electorate.

Overall, Clinton remained on track to win a majority of votes in the Electoral College, the Reuters/Ipsos survey showed.

Having so many ballots locked down before the Nov. 8 election is good news for the Clinton campaign. On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it is examining newly discovered emails belonging to Clinton’s close aide, Huma Abedin. Those emails were found on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, Abedin’s estranged husband, during an unrelated investigation into illicit messages he is alleged to have sent to a teenage girl. The Reuters/Ipsos survey was conducted before the news emerged Friday afternoon.

It remains unclear whether the FBI inquiry will upset the balance in the race. The bureau disclosed nothing about the Abedin emails, including whether any of the messages were sent by or to Clinton. Over the summer, the FBI said it was closing its investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email system while secretary of state. Until Friday, her campaign seemed to have weathered the initial FBI email probe.

Clinton has held a lead averaging four to seven percentage points in polls in recent weeks as the Trump campaign wrestled with accusations by women of groping and other sexual advances. Trump has said none of the accusations are true. He also struggled in the recent presidential debates and faced questions about his taxes.

As of Thursday, Clinton’s odds of receiving the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency remained at greater than 95 percent, according to State of the Nation polling results released Saturday. The project estimated she would win by 320 votes to 218, with 278 votes solidly for the Democrat.

Clinton’s lead among early voters is similar to the lead enjoyed by President Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney at this point of the 2012 race, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken at the time. Obama won the election by 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206.

But even before the latest email news, it had been a difficult week for Clinton. News coverage of Trump’s accusers had diminished, while Clinton confronted the almost daily release by WikiLeaks of emails purportedly hacked from her campaign manager’s account. This week’s leaked messages raised questions about former President Bill Clinton’s finances.

And her lead in the States of the Nation project fell slightly from last week. Though the projected Electoral College votes hardly moved, the number of states solidly for Clinton slid from 25 to 20 this week. Trump didn’t see any additional states tilt solidly to him, but he did see some gains: The swing states of Pennsylvania, Colorado, Iowa and Nevada all moved from leaning to Clinton to being too close to call.

Still, Trump’s path to a victory is narrow, and any realistic chance rests on his winning Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. As of Thursday, Ohio remained a toss-up. Florida and North Carolina were still tilting toward Clinton, according to the States of the Nation results.

Early voting data for Florida and North Carolina was not yet available this week. In Ohio, Clinton led Trump by double digits among early voters. The project’s broader polling suggests the state is deadlocked between the two candidates.

In Arizona, Clinton also was solidly ahead among early voters. In the past month, Arizona has gradually moved from a solid Trump state to a marginal Clinton state, although it is still too close to call, according to the project results.

In Georgia, she enjoyed a similar lead among early voters. Overall, Georgia leans to Trump, but his lead narrowed to five percentage points this week, down from eights points last week and 13 points a month ago.

Even in Texas, where Trump enjoys a sizable lead, Clinton has a double-digit edge among early voters, according to project results.

The States of the Nation project is a survey of about 15,000 people every week in all 50 states plus Washington D.C. State by state results are available by visiting here
 
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...ly-voting-lead-swing-states-article-1.2852678

Hillary Clinton building big early voting lead in battleground states


Cameron Joseph
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, October 31, 2016, 6:56 PM



With one week until election day, more than 23 million Americans have already voted - and it's becoming clear that Donald Trump has a lot of ground to make up.

Analysis of early voting trends shows Hillary Clinton is building a potentially insurmountable lead in some traditional battleground states, narrowing Trump's potential path to victory while fighting Trump to a draw in other states that are must-wins for the GOP nominee.

While there are some bright spots for Trump, particularly in the Midwest, early voting is reflecting recent polling that shows Clinton is likely to be the next president, in spite of recent news that the FBI is looking into newly discovered emails of a top aide.

“I'd rather be Clinton than Trump at this point,” said University of Florida Professor Michael McDonald, the head of the U.S. Elections Project and an early voting expert.

Clinton's numbers in swing states with large populations of Latinos and college-educated white people are looking especially good.

In Nevada, Clinton is building the same big early voting margin Las Vegas that gave President Obama an 8-point victory in 2012, and is holding her own in the swing county that includes Reno.

"It looks a lot like 2012," said Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada's press corps. "It's highly unlikely that Trump will win Nevada."

Clinton looks just as solid in Colorado and Virginia, two formerly swing states that for months have leaned towards her in polling. In North Carolina and Florida, both states where a Clinton win would likely end the race, analysts in both parties expect nail-biters.

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North Carolina's laws have changed since 2012, and the biggest spike in early voting has come from independent voters, making apples-to-apples comparisons difficult. Republicans are doing slightly better comparatively than four years ago when Romney won narrowly, but Democrats think they're turning out more new voters.

"There are 94,000 Democrats who didn't vote in 2012 who voted early already, and 69,000 Republicans," said John Hagner, a Democratic analytics expert. "We're ahead of where we want to be."

In Florida, GOP numbers are up slightly - but Hispanics are making up a larger share of the electorate than in the past, a big boon for Democrats, especially since it appears the spike is coming from more reliably Democratic Puerto Rican voters.

"In Florida it's a dogfight but things are looking positive for us right now, we have more Republicans who have cast ballots than previously," said Republican National Committee National Targeting Director Jon Black. "In North Carolina, you've seen Dems slightly underperforming 2012 but the big story is the Republicans and how big they're over-performing 2012."

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Democrats also see bright spots in both states, though they similarly think both are still up for grabs.

"It's a mixed bag. I could sit here today and argue both sides of who's winning, so it's a classic Florida election," said Steve Schale, who ran Obama's Florida campaigns in 2008 and 2012. "It's all trending in the right direction but I would not say sitting here today that this thing is a lock or anywhere close to it. It's still very much up for grabs."

The two candidates' campaign travel schedules bear out the reality that Clinton just needs to win one of the true toss-up states to become president, while Trump needs a big last-minute shift in the map or the electorate.

Clinton's team has been wearing a groove into the traditional swing-state map with repeated visits to Ohio, North Carolina and Florida in recent days from her and top surrogates. If she can win any of those states, the race is over.

Trump, on the other hand, headed to Democratic-leaning Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin in recent days, a sign either that he's either making a last-minute push to expand the map or isn't as laser-focused on hitting the trail in crucial battleground states in the campaign's final 10 days as Clinton and her team are.

"If you're looking at Virginia, Colorado and Nevada being in Clinton's column, that makes it really difficult for Trump," said McDonald. "If Nevada goes the way it's looking Trump really has to pull something out of the hat, he has to win every battleground state we have and he then has to win something else. I saw he's campaigning in Michigan and Wisconsin, and I think that's recognition that they just don't have enough right now, they have to flip something else that has been viewed as Clinton's column."

Ohio, along with Iowa, hold the best early numbers for Trump. Democrats traditionally win big in early voting in both states, but their advantage has dwindled. There has been markedly low turnout in some key Democratic strongholds in Ohio, and analysts in both parties say Trump is looking strongest in the two swing states where he's polled well for months.

"Iowa and Ohio are definitely states we have a hole to dig out of," said Hagner.

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Wisconsin has unusual early-voting laws where elderly people can vote early with no excuse, but anyone under age 60 needs a reason, making the state's early-voting numbers very difficult to interpret. Michigan similarly doesn't have data that shows solid indications one way or the other.

But polling in both traditionally Democratic-leaning states has consistently shown Clinton with a lead.

Black said the party's analytical modeling shows some good news in both states, but Democrats scoff at the idea that Trump will be able to outperform Mitt Romney's 2012 performance in both states enough to actually win.
 
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/10/...da-points-clinton-win-without-late-gop-surge/

Jon Ralston: Early voting in Nevada points to Clinton win without late GOP surge

posted at 5:31 pm on October 31, 2016 by Allahpundit


The nice thing about bad news in early voting is that it’s correctable. If you’re a Republican in Nevada who was iffy about turning out because you thought Trump could win the state without you, here’s your wake-up call. Ralston is probably the most respected political reporter in Nevada, well-practiced at analyzing trends in early voting in election cycles. He sounds awfully sure about Democratic victory right now, given how things have gone so far — with one major caveat.

Trump almost surely is losing Nevada and remains likely to lose it, unless voting patterns are very different from 2012 – that is, unless Hillary Clinton is hemorrhaging her base more than Donald Trump and indies are voting big for him. Neither of those things seems likely, and both are contradicted by polls.

Republicans have to hope for a big last five days and a game-changing Election Day…

Breakdown [of early voting so far] is: 44 percent Dem, 36 percent GOP and 20 percent indies. That’s almost exactly what the final numbers after Election Day looked like in 2012. (Indie turnout is running about a dozen points behind major party turnout.)

The caveat is that we don’t know how early voters are voting, of course, only what their party registration is. It could be that there’s an unusual number of Democrats in Nevada crossing the aisle for Trump this year and/or an unusual number of independents tilting right compared to 2012. But that’s not how you’d bet, at least among Dems: People who turn out early tend to be hardcore partisans who want to get their ballot in ASAP. If an upset was brewing in Nevada, you’d expect to see a higher than expected number of Republicans out early. Ralston is confident enough in what the current trends mean to have dropped this pair of tweets this morning:




 
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