A new survey finds there isn’t much respect to go around this election season. Polls agree that Hillary Clinton is winning, but not by how much. And a survey of Latino voters shows the group feels disengaged from major issue discussions. This is HuffPollster for Friday, October 28, 2016.
MOST DON’T THINK TRUMP RESPECTS DEMOCRACY - Pew Research: “As the presidential campaign enters its final days, opinions about American democracy and the candidates’ respect for democratic institutions – as well their respect for women, minorities and other groups in society– have emerged as political flashpoints. Donald Trump is widely seen as having little or no respect for Muslims, women, Hispanics and blacks. Moreover, 56% of registered voters say that Trump has little or no respect for the ‘nation’s democratic institutions and traditions,’ compared with 43% who say he has a great deal or fair amount of respect for democratic institutions and traditions….Yet concerns over Clinton’s honesty persist, and just 35% say that, if elected, she would make a good or great president; even fewer (27%) think Trump would make a good or great president. These views have changed little over the course of the campaign….The survey finds considerable evidence of the bitterness unleashed by the presidential campaign. Dating back to 1988, no candidate, Democrat or Republican, has been viewed as more critical of their opponent than is Trump today (the question was not asked in 1992).” [Pew]
Most Clinton supporters say they can’t respect Trump supporters - More from Pew: “[M]ost Clinton supporters not only take a dim view of Trump, but say they have a hard time respecting the people who support the Republican nominee. Nearly six-in-ten Clinton supporters (58%) say they ‘have a hard time respecting someone who supports Donald Trump for president.’ Just 40% say they have ‘no trouble’ respecting someone who backs Trump. Trump supporters are less likely to say they have difficulty respecting Clinton voters. Four-in-ten (40%) say they have a hard time respecting Clinton voters, while 56% say they have no trouble doing so. Most voters expect current political divisions to persist after the election, no matter who is elected president.” [Pew]
POLLS DIFFER ON CLINTON’S MARGIN, BUT AGREE THAT SHE’S AHEAD - Mark Murray: “In the last 24 hours, one national poll showed Hillary Clinton with a 14-point lead. Another had her ahead by just three points. And another found it right in the middle ― Clinton up nine points….How to make sense of the plethora of polls? Well, here’s an answer: Clinton is clearly ahead, though the margin is larger in some polls than others. And when looking at the battleground states, she still has the easiest path to the 270 electoral votes. Looking at the national polls, the Huffington Post shows Clinton with an average lead of seven points in the surveys it recognizes, while the RealClearPolitics average has it at five points. To put those numbers into perspective, President Obama won the national vote by seven percentage points in 2008 and by four points in 2012. What’s more, on this same day in the 2012 cycle, Obama held just a 0.6-point lead over Mitt Romney in the Huffington Post poll tracker.” [NBC]
Forecast update - HuffPost’s models give Hillary Clinton a 98 percent chance of winning, and Republicans just a 26 percent chance of holding onto the Senate. [Presidential forecast, Senate forecast]
Variance in the polls is more than just noise - Nate Silver: “How much should you expect the polls to differ from one another? Even if there were no methodological differences, you’d expect some variation as a result of random sampling error. Could the seemingly huge spread in the polls this year turn out to be nothing more than statistical noise? Probably not….The standard deviation for the 2016 polls — 3.6 percentage points — falls just outside the confidence interval, which runs from 1.8 points to 3.5 points. That suggests there are probably some real methodological differences and that the wide spread in the polls doesn’t reflect sampling error alone….although the wide spread in the polls this year may reflect challenges in the polling industry, you shouldn’t make a habit of berating the polls that seem to be outliers or use a somewhat unorthodox methodology. Aggregating mechanisms like polling averages and betting markets are powerful precisely because they reflect a diverse array of approaches and opinions, and they lose their power when they’re subject to herding or groupthink.” [538]
Polls differ in part due to assumptions about who will vote - Philip Bump: “One of the most insightful articles about polling this cycle comes from the New York Times’s Upshot team. With raw poll data from Florida in hand, Upshot asked four pollsters to interpret the results…. Those four pollsters didn’t all come back with the same result. The responses were a one-point Clinton lead, a three-point Clinton lead, a four-point Clinton lead and a one-point lead for Donald Trump. The point of the exercise was to highlight that pollsters make certain assumptions about the data they get back from their interviews. They make assumptions about who is likely to vote and about how to weight the data, for example, which is a different consideration than the quality of the responses from talking to voters. Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics pointed to the Upshot’s results in a series of tweets Thursday morning looking at recent national poll results. ‘The spread on the polls right now really is bothersome,’ he wrote, suggesting a lot of different assumptions about what the electorate will look like. With Clinton’s lead as big as it is, there’s not much question about the final result. If the race narrows, those varying assumptions could be a problem.” [WashPost]
LATINO VOTERS SUPPORT CLINTON BUT FEEL DISENGAGED FROM PROCESS - Nick Bayer: “Seventy percent of registered Latino voters are voting for Clinton this year, while only 17 percent support Trump, according to a new poll from the National Council of La Raza and Latino Decisions. Among Latino registered voters surveyed, 68 percent view Clinton favorably, while only 18 percent have a favorable opinion of Trump. The poll also shows clear Latino support for greater economic equality and wider health care coverage. To provide one figure, 55 percent of Latino voters think we should keep and improve the Affordable Care Act, 16 percent think it’s okay as is, and only 25 percent believe it should be repealed. But despite a lot of attention paid to Latino voters, Eric Rodriguez, Vice President of NCLR, noted with discontent, ‘we haven’t seen a lot of engagement around the issues. No one is really talking to our community and asking [about] what Latino voters are thinking.’ For example, the poll finds over half of respondents don’t think public officials take into account the health needs of the Latino/Hispanic community when considering health insurance reforms. President of the Children’s Partnership Mayra Alvarez’s big takeaway: ‘We have work to do to engage the Latino community in identifying solutions for the future.’” [NCLR]
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FRIDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data.
-Kathy Frankovic writes that the race is remaining mostly stable in its final weeks. [YouGov]
-Donald Trump’s digital director says their campaign’s internal models resemble other forecasts. [HuffPost]
-An analysis of polls shows that Donald Trump has a chance of getting the lowest popular vote proportion in modern presidential elections. [HuffPost]
-Rhodes Cook examines the “historical rarity” of a four-party presidential election. [Sabato’s Crystal Ball]
-Daniel Cox and Robert Jones show that there are stark differences in support for Trump or Clinton by religious group. [PRRI]
-Ashley Kirzinger, Elise Sugarman, and Mollyann Brodie find view voters citing health care as among the top issues in their vote. [KFF]