HUFFPOLLSTER: Most Republican Senate Candidates Are Outpolling Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s scandals don’t seem to have done much damage to Senate Republicans hopefuls. Americans give low marks to Trump’s debate performance. And the election is causing stress for many Americans. This is HuffPollster for Friday, October 14, 2016.

REPUBLICAN SENATE CANDIDATES ARE WEATHERING THE STORM SO FAR - Harry Enten: “In recent elections, more and more voters have been choosing candidates from the same party for president and Senate. That trend appeared to be holding true this year too, even with Donald Trump, unusual as he is, on the ballot. So as Hillary Clinton jumped out to a bigger lead in the polls starting after the first presidential debate in late September, we might have expected Democratic Senate candidates to poll better as well. That hasn’t happened… Indeed, the races for Senate control and the White House have split…. Clinton’s pre-Democratic-convention swoon was matched by Democrats doing worse in the polls. But Democrats rebounded as Clinton did after the convention. Then their odds all fell together in the second half of August and through September. Clinton’s chances began to rise again after the first debate, but unlike after the convention, Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate haven’t followed Clinton’s presidential odds upward. To put this in mathematical terms, the correlation between the Democratic chances in the Senate and Clinton’s chances was a very high +0.87 in the 74 days before the first debate. In the 16 days since, it’s been -.23, indicating that they’re moving in opposite directions.” [538]

HuffPost Pollster’s models show most GOP Senate candidates ahead of Trump -

FORECAST UPDATE - Hillary Clinton has an 91.1 percent chance of winning the presidential election. Republicans have a 61 percent chance of keeping the Senate. [Presidential forecast, Senate forecast]

AMERICANS GIVE THUMBS DOWN TO DONALD TRUMP’S DEBATE ATTACKS - HuffPollster: “Americans who paid any attention to Sunday’s presidential debate saw Donald Trump’s most striking attacks on Hillary Clinton as largely inappropriate, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. They also think he failed to adequately address that video in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women. By a 14-point margin (52 percent to 38 percent), Americans who tuned in to the debate say that it was inappropriate for Trump to threaten to jail Clinton if he’s elected president...By an 18-point margin (55 percent to 37 percent), they say it was inappropriate to attack her by bringing up Bill Clinton’s past personal behavior. And 51 percent say that Trump’s response to the now-infamous 2005 video ― ‘I apologize to the American people. Certainly I’m not proud of it. But this is locker room talk’ ― wasn’t good enough. Thirty-one percent say the apology was good enough, while 11 percent say he had nothing to apologize for….Confirming the results of previous snap polls, the HuffPost/YouGov survey finds that the debate was overall seen as a win for Clinton. Forty-four percent of Americans who paid attention to the event say that Clinton won, while 32 percent say that Trump did, and 23 percent don’t think either did or aren’t sure.” [HuffPost]

Trump’s image slides among Republicans - Frank Newport and Andrew Dugan: “Donald Trump’s favorable rating among Republicans dropped from 69% to 64% in the fallout after The Washington Post released a 2005 video in which he made lewd comments about women, and after the second presidential debate on Sunday night. Trump’s unfavorable rating ticked up slightly from 30% to 33%. There was virtually no change in Trump’s already poor image among independents or Democrats...The gulf between the partisan ratings of the two candidates at this point is substantial. Trump now has a 64% favorable rating among Republicans (for Oct. 7-11), while Clinton enjoys an 84% favorable rating among Democrats. Both candidates have high unfavorables among those in the opposing party, while Clinton has a slight edge among independents….By Monday night, 92% of Americans recalled having read, seen or heard something about Trump in the last day or two. That compares with 84% for Clinton ― even though the two presidential candidates had nearly equal speaking time on stage at Sunday’s debate in St. Louis. The 92% recall figure for Trump is the highest for either candidate since Gallup tracking of this measure began in July.” [Gallup]

THIS ELECTION IS STRESSING AMERICANS OUT - Max Greenwood: “Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are stressing Americans out. More than half of U.S. adults polled say the 2016 presidential race is causing them stress, according to a Harris Poll/American Psychological Association survey out Thursday. And social media may be making it even worse. Fifty-two percent of respondents said the election is a ‘very significant’ or ‘somewhat significant’ source of stress. Among those who use social media, 54 percent reported being stressed by the race. But that percentage fell to 45 percent for people who don’t use social media, the survey found...What’s more, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. Nearly equal percentages of respondents from both parties reported stress tied to the elections – 59 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats.” [HuffPost]

Economic anxiety is also at a new high - Kai Ryssdal: “Last October, Marketplace launched our first-ever national economic survey, the Marketplace-Edison Research Poll. We did it so that we could find out and track — over time — how people are feeling about the economy all through this election year and heading into the voting booth. And find out we did. Over the past year, we’ve learned about the economic things that keep Americans up at night. (Thirty-nine percent of us lose sleep over our finances — 11 percentage points higher than it was a year ago). We’ve learned that 28 percent of Americans are afraid of not being able to pay their mortgages — that’s up from 10 percent a year ago. And we’ve learned that almost half of all Americans with full- or part-time jobs – 48 percent — say they’re working ‘just a job’ and not part of a career development path.” [Marketplace]

MOST PEOPLE WORLDWIDE THINK THEIR COUNTRY IS ON THE WRONG TRACK - Ipsos: “The new Ipsos study ‘What Worries the World’ is an online survey of adults in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Britain, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States. Its premise is simple: it asks global citizens whether they think things in their country are headed in the right direction or on the wrong track, and what the issues are which most worry them. This global study finds that, overall, people across all countries are more likely to think things in their country are off on the wrong track (63%), than headed in the right direction (37%.) Most pessimistic are the French, 88% of whom think things are going wrong, with only 12% feeling that things are going well…. The most optimistic are countries are China, where 90% say things are headed in the right direction, Saudi Arabia (71%), and India (67%). Americans are in the middle of the pack with about two thirds (64%) say they think things are going in the wrong direction.” [Ipsos]

THE USC/LA TIMES POLL TEAM RESPOND TO CRITICISM - David Lauter: “On Wednesday, the New York Times published an interesting piece that looked at how the USC/Los Angeles Times ‘Daybreak’ tracking poll weights its sample. The article suggested that the weighting was the main factor in causing the Daybreak poll to be the only major survey that had showed Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. That’s not entirely the case, and here are some questions and answers about why…. After the New York Times story was published, we reweighted the data to remove one of the weights that has attracted the most discussion — balancing the sample to match how people said they voted in 2012. The result? Some change, but not an overwhelming amount. Looking at the poll’s 14 weeks so far, there were three times when removing that weight switched the result from a Trump lead to a Clinton lead. Generally, the shift was between one and two percentage points…. In the case of the Daybreak poll, there’s one young black respondent who is a strong supporter of Trump…. Did that young black Trump supporter have a big impact on the poll’s overall results? He did have some impact on Trump’s support some weeks — less than a point, but definitely a measurable difference…. Of course, the whole point of weighting is to make sure that all groups are represented; Trump does have some young supporters, even among minority groups.” [LA Times]

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FRIDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:

-We fact-checked Donald Trump’s claim that the polls show the presidential race in a “dead heat.” [HuffPost]

-Sean Trende explains why he doesn’t think Trump will recover from his polling deficit by election day. [RealClearPolitics]

-A new Time/SurveyMonkey poll finds voters unhappy with the country and disappointed with their presidential options. [TIME]

-Heidi Przybyla reports on Hillary Clinton’s expanded outreach to male GOP voters. [USA Today]