He's never led at any point in the race...

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton

But he was up for seven minutes in the nowcast so IN YO FACE.

lol, honestly, I think that sort of thing ends up being to the good - it scares the shit out of Dems and motivates them to get out and vote, and similarly comforts Trumpies.

So much of the noise ends up canceling out. The Democrats especially do have a really robust online fundraising operation though, and the DNC/DSCC/DCCC and every candidate and notable person (like Michelle Obama) is always looking for every outlier poll (good and especially BAD) that they can stuff in an email ask to send out to different email lists in hopes that they can motivate donors to contribute. In that respect, a lot of the times it's better to have some shit polling firms and college universities like Emerson releasing their trash surveys because at least then you'll have a steady stream of bad numbers to use for your own purposes without the overall state of the race being bad.

Ideally the Democrats would like to see Clinton leading by 4-5 points, that's a good number because it allows for maximum potential on both positive-based and negative-based asks, in fundraising and volunteering. The more the lead gets bigger or smaller than that, the less use they'll get out of one of those themes, positive or negative.

This post was edited by Pollster on Sep 29 2016 01:49pm

This has always been a problem facing Republicans in a national election. Even before Trump was selected as the GOP nominee, the Democrats were almost certainly going to have solid national advantages with key demographics - women, Hispanics, and Blacks.

Trump being the face of the GOP has just exacerbated this demographic issue facing Republicans. Trump is probably doing worse with Hispanics, Blacks, and women (and probably Muslims, Mormons, and Jews, too) than the average GOP candidate would have done.

So it's not just a problem with Trump, but it's also a problem that the GOP has to take a strong look at going forward. Historically, Conservatives have depended heavily upon the White vote (particularly the White Christian vote), and that demographic has been in slow decline for decades. Fortunately for the party, it is still a demographic to be reckoned with, especially in Congress and state elections.

This post was edited by ThatAlex on Sep 29 2016 03:02pm

WHERE'S OUR MINUTE BY MINUTE UPDATE OF THE NOWCAST

I ignored you last time (http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=72969075&f=119&p=507982226) because you were being a condescending prick.

In any case, I've never wavered from the Democrats/HRC being the odds-on favorite this election, and that was even before Trump was the GOP nominee. The Democrats have key demographics in their favor, and Trump has only exacerbated that issue for the GOP.

I put much more stock into the RCP average, Vegas odds, and political market rates than I do FiveThirtyEight's now-cast; in that particular case I was just pointing out that Trump had a solid two weeks in the polls before the debate. It was only the second time he led in that model since his post-convention bump, and I certainly did not expect him him to win if the election was held right then because obviously it is not a perfect model and that wasn't even the point I was illustrating.

In any case, that's the context I pointed out the nowcast in, just as an overall metric that showed Trump had been having a strong two weeks in the polls, not that I actually thought he'd win. But after his bad debate, I expect HRC to climb back to a 4 or 5 point lead again instead of a 1 or 2 point cushion.

This post was edited by ThatAlex on Sep 29 2016 06:43pm

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/did-alicia-machado-breach-weight-clause-as-trump-campaign-claims-190821594.html

Weight Clause deflection that Trump camp is using seems to be another factcheck nightmare. I'm sure the main reason for the pivot to the "sex tape" (which reportedly isn't her, not that you could disprove/prove a sextape conclusively beyond denying it if the look is similar) is because there IS a morality clause which includes postdated nudity material. So if a woman is Miss ____ and a sex tape is released they can be disposed.

NB post for 2 weeks ago I guess we can add a few examples now