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Overview
To accurately answer this question, we must first set the scene of where the race stood prior to Friday’s bombshell. Here was the state of play before Comey’s letter:
– Donald Trump was tied or led in only five of the previous 44 national polls, and they were all narrow leads in Rasmussen and L.A. Times — two polls that have been notoriously favorable to Trump all year long.
– Clinton held a 5.6 point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average. That’s almost exactly where Barack Obama was at the same juncture of his 2008 election rout of John McCain.
– Trump led in only one of the previous five polls of reliable red state Arizona.
– Trump had led in only three polls of Colorado since June, which no one has won the presidency without in 20 years.
– Trump had only led in two of the previous 14 polls of Florida, and only one of the previous 15 polls of North Carolina. Without those are two states, he has no chance of winning the Electoral College.
– Trump’s one and only lead in any Pennsylvania poll was in mid-July.
– Trump has not led in any poll of Virginia. No Republican has won the White House without it since Reconstruction. In fact, only four polls had him behind in Virginia by fewer than five points.
These are the reasons why prediction markets had Clinton at over 80 percent odds to win the White House. And why forecast models like those conducted by Nate Silver, whose model has only missed on one state in the last two presidential elections combined, also had Clinton with a better than 80 percent chance to win.
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Conclusion
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A lot of things still have to go right for Trump to win the election, but Hillary/Comey has made those odds better. How much better is hard to say, and we’ll likely know more by mid-week when we’ll get more data or another Trump oppo dump (or both).
Still, there’s a reason Trump’s gone from 17 percent to win in the prediction markets to 23 percent as of the time of this writing. Granted, those odds still aren’t great, but they’re better than they were prior to Comey’s letter.
Finally, whatever boost one believes Trump will receive from this will likely be exceeded by down-ballot Republicans. For they were in a stronger position than Trump to begin with, and this story provides another incentive for independent voters turned off by Trump’s persona to split their ticket and vote GOP to hold Hillary’s feet to the fire.
- Discussion
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My analysis of whether the #jamescomey bombshell could hand the election to @realDonaldTrump for @CR https://t.co/S4Q07NGydB
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) October 31, 2016
“For they were in a stronger position than Trump to begin with, and this story provides another incentive for independent voters turned off by Trump’s persona to split their ticket and vote GOP to hold Hillary’s feet to the fire.”
I hope Steve doesn’t hold his breath on that one:(
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