I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

538 is so shook

srsly, i cannot take witnessing the pollmania y'all are torturing yourself with, you're gonna end up like that reporter in Shock Corridor or Herbert Lom in the Clouseau movies.

i'd rather have my huevos waxed than watch those 'debates'

y'know, I think I agree with you on that last point Morbz

she's up the last few days at nyt and predictwise so who knows who to believe at this point

but 538 has her 85% to win NJ which sounds waaaaaaaay off to me

It's good polling compared to recent polls, but it was still lower than the last ones from same polling companies. It further proves that the race is tightening, though it also seems the tightening is plateauing. We'll see if the plateauing might be reversing soon.

the race is tightening
the tightening is plateauing
the plateauing might be reversing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cJmpwkUx4s

the only thing that should be on huevos is a dash of pepper and a dot of Tabasco

here's a bunch of dumb data visualizations http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo

Have the debate dates/moderators/formats even been finalized or announced yet?

http://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2016-debate-schedule/2016-presidential-debate-schedule/

Trump's never been in this situation, I imagine his rambling is going to attain new levels

The town meeting participants will be uncommitted voters selected by the Gallup Organization.

the worst part of every election is that we have to pretend these dumb people are important

god that was mean-spirited sorry

with no crowd participation he's just going to look like a fat deer in headlights xxp

yeah and it's one-on-one, he can't just zone out for the boring parts

xp yea i agree the audience silence won't be good, the republican primary debates had cheering audiences that worked in his favor

i don't necessarily think clinton will "wipe the floor" w/ him and im sure he will get in a bunch of zingers that will be replayed endlessly but the format isn't great for him and yea like outic said trump has never been in a one-on-one debate

the race is tightening
the tightening is plateauing
the plateauing might be reversing
Rochelle, Rochelle!

the race is tightening
the tightening is plateauing
the plateauing might be reversing
ATTICA, ATTICA, ATTICA, ATTICA

the race is tightening
the tightening is plateauing
the plateauing might be reversing
free Sacco and Vanzetti!

the race is tightening
the tightening is plateauing
the plateauing might be reversing
AMANDA

i'm looking forward to pence being asked to defend trump for 90 minutes.

me too! i was gonna post that.

:D xxp

contrast of a happy & friendly kaine vs pence defending trump will be great

the race is tightening
the tightening is plateauing
the plateauing might be reversing
and god is empty just like me.

I think Pence/Kaine will be even more boring than most VP debates. Clinton/Trump, I have no idea what to expect, but I think the first one will produce one or two of those moments that get replayed for years.

Hopefully it won't be something like, "I know Ted Cruz, Mr. Trump. I've worked with Ted Cruz--Ted Cruz is a friend of mine. And you, sir, are no Ted Cruz."

"Ted Cruz speaks in complete sentences"

i'm just hoping the moderators have been scared enough by the Lauer situation that they don't softball him

Oh god that's the most encouraging thing to come from Lauer blowing it. I hope it motivates them as well.

I think it will. Press is hypersensitive to the kind of criticism Lauer got, so the questioners should go hard on Trump.

i don't necessarily think clinton will "wipe the floor" w/ him and im sure he will get in a bunch of zingers that will be replayed endlessly but the format isn't great for him and yea like outic said trump has never been in a one-on-one debate

this is all probably true but I think the reason why this is must-watch TV is because Trump tends to lose his mind a bit when he gets cornered and I think Clinton's team is coming up with all kinds of ways to goad him into saying something stupid. the thing about the CiC forum is that he wound up saying all kinds of ridiculous things even though Lauer softballed him and allowed him to get away with all sorts of deflection - that won't work here.

ofc I don't think it'll matter much in the end. I dunno what Trump would have to say in order to lose the voters he hasn't lost already. Best thing Clinton can do is try to talk about herself as much as she can.

if he calls Clinton a bitch it's p much over

Hillary should come out with oversized prosthetic hands

hahaha

http://www.country1067.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/33/files/hulksmashhands.jpg

I can definitely see Trump getting into some trouble by shouting over her. Sanders did this a few times during the Dem debates and it came across very poorly.

I'm trying not to be too optimistic about them but part of me feels like they're going to get watched by a lot of people who don't really follow politics (they do draw higher ratings than NFL games), who don't like either candidate but don't know how awful and clueless Trump really is. Sometimes I have to take a step back and see that there aren't very many people who follow this like the people on this thread do.

late Monmouth poll hit today and has Hillary up 5 points in Florida.

weirdly, after that poll hit, 538 put the odds at the strongest ever for Trump. I know there was a bevy of IPSOS state polls today that I wonder if he was late to factor in.

at this point....I'm not looking at these stupid things anymore. bring on Nov.

I see some discussion was had upthread about this (was at work all day).

lol

nate silver was tweeting about polls showing a tie in maine and hill down by a bit in nevada and some other state.. maybe just up by 1 in north carolina?

I can definitely see Trump getting into some trouble by shouting over her. Sanders did this a few times during the Dem debates and it came across very poorly.

Male politicians can't seem to stop themselves from doing this when they're one-on-one against her. Rick Lazio did it, too, actually walking from his podium to hers to get her to sign some stupid pledge of his...he wound up losing by 10 points.

I feel like (hope?) the Clinton team hasn't even had to crack open their oppo research folder yet, but October should be a bad month for Trump.

I like this: https://medium.com/@HillaryClinton/an-open-letter-to-wells-fargo-customers-c0c1bc508866#.pe8pf4jv8

in a way it behooves the media to sit on these extra juicy tidbits until october because it gives them max time for the ol' horse race

I kinda doubt that's happening tbh. As noted there's already so much that's been thrown at him and it just kinda goes nowhere (cf.ongoing Washington Post charity investigation), the press doesn't know how to handle Trump's "scandals" because there's too many of them and he's managed to insulate himself from the damage with a segment of the population who essentially do not traffic in facts or rationality (or effects for that matter)

or ETHICS for that matter

I meant to say

cuz you know, the press is just so so unfair

I'm thinking more about the sleazy, juicy stuff, not the, you know, actual scandals.

hillary letter is nice buuuuut.. same shit happened 8 years ago and aint nobody got prosecuted for that