The Tuesday after Labor Day is the real New Year’s Day. School begins, football is about to begin, the pumpkin spice will flow, the season is changing before our eyes… I can hear all the trees above my lawn starting to chuckle at how much raking I’m going to have to do in the coming months.
From today’s Morning Jolt:
A Genuinely Shocking Poll, One That Might Shift the Campaign Narrative
If you’re a Donald Trump fan, this should have you dancing:
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton start the race to November 8 on essentially even ground, with Trump edging Clinton by a scant two points among likely voters, and the contest sparking sharp divisions along demographic lines in a new CNN/ORC Poll.
Trump tops Clinton 45% to 43% in the new survey, with Libertarian Gary Johnson standing at 7% among likely voters in this poll and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at just 2%.
CNN’s poll at the end of July had Clinton up, 45 percent to 37 percent. So this result runs counter to the easiest explanation, that she’s had a rough couple of days because of the FBI report revelations. She’s actually holding stable or only losing a little ground; Trump is jumping ahead. His hitting 45 percent in a four-way race here is really surprising and significant; in most previous polling he struggled to hit 40 percent. Maybe being reminded of Clinton’s relentlessly dishonest and reckless ways of doing business is bringing skeptics on board with the GOP nominee.
But wait, there’s this weirdness, too, in the latest Washington Post poll that surveyed all 50 states separately:
The Texas results, which are based on a sample of more than 5,000 people, show a dead heat, with Clinton ahead by one percentage point.
Eh, no other poll has shown Clinton ahead in Texas.
Also note that time is running out for the third-party candidates:
Neither major third party candidate appears to be making the gains necessary to reach the 15% threshold set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, with just three weeks to go before the first debate on September 26.
Johnson has hit 12 a few times, but is otherwise in the high single digits.