Unusual polling question shows landslide HRC win

[based on reporting by Samantha Neal, The Huffington Post]

Recent polling has suggested a drop in Hillary Clinton's support following the FBI Director's scolding of her "extremely careless" handling of emails.  However, the three latest national polls, released on Sunday, show HRC coming back to a 4% to 7% lead.

However, when pollsters don't just ask people who they plan to vote for, but instead ask "who do you think will win in November?" -- the results are striking.    Past polling with this question suggests that it often more accurately predicts the eventual winner, because it requires people to consider objective expectations, not just subjective intent.   This is also the basis for the "market" based predictions, where people actually bet on who will win.   The latest of these, Predictwise, gives the advantage to the Democrat nominee 70% to 30%.

Neal's report says this: 

"As for which candidate voters think will prevail in November, Clinton utterly eclipses Trump. According to every pollster who has tracked this question over the past month . . . Clinton wins by a margin ranging from 16 to 28 percentage points ― and this lead has been sustained over the entire course of the general election. . . .  

"The merit of the expectations question has been researched extensively by Daviod Rothschild and Justin Wolfers, who argue that asking people whom they expect will win instead of whom they prefer 'grabs a much larger slice of people’s experience and knowledge, including a whole range of idiosyncratic facts' that are otherwise impossible to quantify. In this sense, voters are prompted to make a projection based on their cumulative experiences, which typically produces a more accurate prediction than a singular vote can."

At this point, Clinton is polling better in the expectations question than Barack Obama did against John McCain in 2012 or against Mitt Romney in 2016.

Now, if the worldwide terrorists attacks don't keep making people want a "tough-talking strong man" instead of a wise, experienced, level-headed woman in charge, we will elect our first woman president in less than four months.    And we haven't even had the first Clinton-Trump debate yet.  Nor the conventions.   Nor the VP picks (latest polls were conducted before Pence was named).

Ralph

BTW:   The debates are scheduled for:  Sept 26;  Oct 9, and Oct 19;  VP debate Oct 4.