Rasmussen says it is close.

"Rasmussen Reports’ latest White House Watch survey finds Hillary Clinton with 42% support among Likely U.S. Voters and Donald Trump with 41%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson picks up seven percent (7%), while Green Party nominee Jill Stein again has two percent (2%) of the vote, according to our latest national telephone and online survey. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, and six percent (6%) are undecided.

Yesterday, Clinton took a two-point lead – 43% to 41% - after ending last week behind her Republican rival by an identical margin. She jumped ahead by seven at the beginning of last week following the airing of a video showing Trump making graphic sexual remarks, but the race evened out again following the candidates’ second debate.  Their final debate is tomorrow night.

Eighty-five percent (85%) of voters say they are now sure how they are going to vote, and among these voters, Clinton and Trump are dead even at 47% apiece. Johnson gets five percent (5%) support, Stein two percent (2%). Among voters who still could change their minds, it’s Clinton 37%, Trump 30%, Johnson 26% and Stein seven percent (7%)."   Rasmussen

------------

Well, which is it?  Is she ahead by 12% or is Rasmussen right? 

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2016/white_house_watch_oct18

Comments

[LondonBob]

LA Times has him up 1.5 (most accurate in 2012), PPD has him up 1 (Most accurate in 2014). Richard Baris, the PPD pollster, thinks a lot of the polls are push polls or weighted wrong.

[turcopolier]

LondonBob

I am hearing a lot of anecdotal stories of the great number of Trump signs outside the big cities. pl

[Tyler]

LB,

I've been saying this whole election when you break down the metrics the polls aren't reliable for many of them. A 500 person poll that oversamples D+20 with the MOE starting at 5 isn't a poll, it's an attempt to shape a narrative.

[Allen Thomson]

Rasmussen has a long-established reputation for producing GOP-friendly results, though it's still among the serious polling organizations. I'd expect the actual state of things to be a couple of points above Rasmussen, but well below 12%.

See http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

[Tyler]

Sir,

Hillary is awful on all the issues near and dear to Arizona, but somehow she is "tied" in this state. She is supposedly only behind by 4 in Texas. She is unable to fill a junior college gym while Trump draws crowds of thousands.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

[Walker]

The Washington Post called Rasmussen The GOP's Cure for the Common Poll. You have to consider the source, yes, but you also have to consider Rasmussen's track record, which consistently skews Republican.

[Tigermoth]

This article based on "news cycle" data research indicates that D Trump is an unintended consequence of the DNC trying to fragment the Republican voters in the early stages of the campaign.

He was one of the "Pied Piper" candidates that they kept in the news cycle to push out J. Bush. This researcher's hypothesis was confirmed in one of the leaked emails. LOL.

http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/10/russian-artificial-intelligence-expert.html

"The eccentric billionaire popped up last year into the presidential elections like a jack-in-the-box. Messed all Republican plans for the White house having crept into their ranks. And became a headache for the Democrat Hillary Clinton and her entire party...

Trump was hyped ... by the Democratic party itself.

- Impossible?!

- May be. But I could not even imagine this. Therefore concluded about the owners of the United States. It turns out that the Democrats back in April 2015 contemplated about how to win elections. Some of them came up with the "brilliant" idea to assist in the media promotion of marginal candidates from the "enemy party" so those at the stage of the primaries pushed the real contenders out of the race.

The main real candidate of the Republican party, behind whom were concentrated enormous financial resources, was considered to be Jeb Bush. So with the help of the Democrats, the media, America and the UK hyped the Republican Trump.

- Is this your guess?

- A few days ago Wikileaks posted another batch of DNC emails. There is a very interesting document from April 7, 2015

So at the start the media promoted Pied Piper candidates from the "enemy party". Because Cruz and Carson were quite respectable people, the emphasis was on the eccentric Trump, whom many then considered a buffoon.

If in 2015 Democrats made efforts to promote Trump, now began a chain reaction. The person who was given the role of a puppet, thief of votes, has suddenly become so popular among Republicans that they had no choice but to write about him. He became media-self-sufficient. The whole year according to my content analysis he was the leader by frequency of mentions in the leading American mass media.

It continues today, when the acute phase of the election campaign has begun and buckets of dirt are pouring from one and the other side.

I made a chart which shows for the last month and a half Trump leading on the frequency of mentions in the media headlines. Press, TV would love to stop, but they can't live without Trump. The amazing thing is that in each of the analyzed media, he is also ahead of Hillary."

So is D Trump going to have the last laugh? It is so close that the Borg is worried enough to try and silence Wikileaks.

[Booby]

My rural MD county traditionally has Republican signs in the rural areas & Democrat signs in town, especially around the college. "Professor's row" is normally a wall of blue posters. This year the rural areas have lots of Trump posters; but, I've only seen 2 Hillary posters in town. It's irrelevant because MD will go strongly Democratic because of the DC suburbs & Baltimore voters.

Also I just finished a road trip to NM & back & saw only 1 Hillary bumper sticker in 5 days on the inter states.

If I could change my name to "None of the Above", I could be President.

[Fred]

Col.,

Even in Ann Arbor, not a big city but a very liberal one, the pro-Hilary signs are pretty scant. There is none of the enthusiasm for Democrats that existed in the elections from 2004-2008.

[Lemur]

The media are trying to blackpill us by making us think everyone else is turning anti-Trump.

[Allen Thomson]

Yes indeed:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/us/politics/donald-trump-signs.html

"Over the course of eight days, while traveling some 3,000 miles by motorcycle across the northern United States, I was steadily confronted by presidential yard signs.

"I idly recorded those in support of Donald J. Trump until, after the first few days, the number approached 100. I eventually lost count.

"Those in support of Hillary Clinton were comparatively easy to keep track of: I traveled nearly 2,500 miles before I saw a single one.

"By the end of my trip, I’d spotted a whopping five."

In this big city -- well, NW San Antonio -- either sort of sign is very rare and those few about equally divided between H and D. Bumper stickers are also not in evidence.

http://news4sanantonio.com/news/san-antonios-voice/whats-up-with-political-signs-this-year

[Seamus Padraig]

Nate Silver called the Republican primaries wrong, so I can't trust his methodology anymore. I'm going to Real Clear Politics, which reprints a variety of polls from a variety of sources.

[Lefty]

Certainly the way it is in the valley of Virginia. A quick drive through the towns along I81 shows many Trump signs, very few whats her name. But, the Dems generally discount the utility of signs, so that may affect the relative numbers. Us rural types value them as a show of force.

Weighting may well be the polling variance. Deciding what makes a likely voter often changes raw numbers materially.

Thanks for your response to me last week. Was away from access so couldn't say tku then.

[turcopolier]

lefty

You can't see much from I 81. Rte 11 which goes through the towns paralleling I 81 would be a better sample. pl

[AJ]

In my pretty liberal town in Massachusetts (where Hillary went to college), I haven't seen too many Clinton/Kaine signs. No where near the number of Obama signs in 2012. I've seen a few Trump signs. I know this is anecdotal, but my neighbor, a middle-aged Indian-American women, Cornell grad, professional, is a BIG Trump supporter. She was telling me that her whole family back in NY is supporting Trump. Another neighbor, a middle-aged woman, made it clear in a conversation that she is supporting Trump. Neither of them has a Trump sign or bumper sticker visible. Now, I know in my state Hillary has it locked up. But still, from this anecdotal evidence I gotta wonder if there could be a surprise which forces DHS and Jeh to make good on their talk and step in and invalidate the result.

[ISL]

From the left central coast (California), you still see Bernie stickers and even some Obama stickers, but almost no HRC bumper stickers. So only 4 years ago, the Dems were far more enthusiastic than today.

[steve]

Trump signs are all over my normally democratic, small-town Iowa county.

[FourthAndLong]

Thanks for the link. One of the most fascinating analyses I've ever read. Could have been written by Gogol, almost.

[AJ]

Yeah, you see some along Rte. 15 in Frederick and into central PA. Huge Trump billboard heading south I-81 near Scranton. I was in Poconos area recently and saw lots of Trump signs. Same in upstate NY and Finger Lakes region. Where I've seen the most Trump signs is Boston's South Shore, west of the Irish Riviera (Hanson, Pembroke, Bridgewater, Abington, et al.). You see huge homemade signs on trailers and even Trump flags flying. A lot of cops, firefighters, tradesmen in those parts. My wife and I were driving through (Easton?) and noticed that damn near every lawn had a Trump sign.

[Eric Newhill]

IMO, The Rasmussen polls probably aren't too far off the mark with regards to what people who answer the phone think. However, I believe this election will come down to what people will actually do on Nov 8. Based on various inputs that are available to me, Trump supporters are hyper-motivated and Clinton supporters less so. Just about every Trumpist will get out and vote. Some Clintonistas will just stay home and that could swing the election to a Trump win.

We've already covered the sampling skew in some of the other polls in previous conversations. I guess we'll find out who's right about that soon enough.

Anecdotally, where I live in upstate NY, starting at my farm and continuing down the road out of town, there are Trump signs one after another. In the town itself (a college town) almost exclusively Clinton signs. They've been popping up in the past few days like mushrooms after a rain.

Also, you go to the hardware store, the feed store, the beer section of the grocery store, the gun store for ammo, the tractor dealer, talk to construction guys, cops and veterans and you say "hello" to someone you know or someone you've seen around, but don't know that well, and inevitably the conversation becomes centered on politics and, after a little dance to make sure it's ok, it comes around to how we need Trump and what a god awful mess this country will be if Clinton wins. In town, the college kids think Trump is a Nazi, but they hate Clinton too (they were Bernie supporters). I think they will go third party or stay home. The college profs are all going for Clinton, though some preferred Bernie.

[Jack]

Sir

I live in Democratville. My state reliably votes Democrat. I too observe the same lack of bumper stickers and yard signs for the Borg Queen. However, I see plenty of signs for other candidates.

From an anecdotal perspective among my family and friends no one is voting for "Her". Many are voting for Jill Stein. A few are voting Trump. None are enthused about continuing the status quo. All want some kind of change, whatever it may be.

I have no idea who Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia will elect. They will decide our next president. I just don't think the polls are reliable. We know the massive collusion between the media and the Borg Queen's campaign to first undermine and then stack the primary against Bernie. Now we see this unprecedented pile-on to wean women away from Trump. In my travels in the South-east and Mid-west I notice that many know we're on the wrong track. They want change. But how the majority vote is something I don't have a sense of. I hope folks see through the media IO and take a chance on Trump. At worst we'll have more dysfunctionality. But on the other hand we could cut the Borg down a notch. Trump is beholden to no one at this point. The MSM, duopoly establishment and the big money have openly opposed him to the hilt. He owes them no favors.

[Alexandria]

Drove down to Lexington/Natural Bridge last weekend. Nothing but Trump-Pence along 81 and 11. Not a Clinton-Kaine to be seen anywhere, but, that's the Valley

[Matthew]

AJ: This is true of many legal immigrants, particularly, those who came over on special visas.

We are not offended by Trump wanting to secure the borders.

[Brunswick]

LA Times is not a poll, it's a focus group.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/upshot/how-one-19-year-old-illinois-man-is-distorting-national-polling-averages.html?_r=0

[Jack]

Sir

The electoral college inherently favors a Democrat. Between the western coastal states and the North eastern states and states like Illinois the Democrat starts with 220+. Any Republican candidate has to run the table in the swing states to win. A tall order in the best of circumstances. In this election with the exception of actual voters everyone else has done everything possible to take out Trump. While the probability is in the Borg Queens favor I find it really amazing that Trump is so competitive. It says something. Not sure what the implications are. I am willing to bet however that if the Borg Queen comes across the finish line first she will not have much legitimacy among a large swathe of voters who have seen the naked use of power by the Borg to keep their gravy train going.