Today's Political Comment

Nate Silver just posted a bunch of tweets which collectively say…

In state-by-state polls, Trump is considerably underperforming Romney 2012 in red states; he's similar to Romney in blue & purple states. This has several implications, one of which is that national polls may *slightly* overstate his troubles. We need more purple state polls. On the flip side, if the election were to turn into a rout, there aren't very many totally safe red states, and Clinton could get 400+ EV.

Obviously, this is not good news for Trump. I mean, equaling Romney's performance still means you lose by a pretty wide margin. Underperforming is even worse.

Obviously too, we're 141 days from the election, the presumptive candidates are still presumptive, they don't even have running mates yet, the debates haven't happened, yadda yadda yadda. I still think we have some scandals as yet unknown to the public and that you can count on both Clinton and Trump saying and doing some really, really stupid things.

So why does current polling matter? Well obviously, this makes it harder for Trump to get certain donors and endorsement and supporters. Other candidates have come from behind to win but other candidates didn't have his disapproval ratings. Hillary has whopping disapproval numbers too but hers don't seem to be hurting her too much.

More significantly: Trump's primary appeal, such as it is, is that he's sold himself as a "winner," as a guy who always triumphs. It's hard to make that work when your opponent has a double-digit lead on you and there's a real possibility that you'll lose states that have traditionally gone for your party.

At the same time, one of the bigger arguments for Bernie Sanders was that he could beat Donald Trump but Hillary Clinton could not. That's also a hard argument to make at the moment.

I'm about 97% certain the Hillary/Donald contest will change in the coming months…then change again and again and again. I will get more "talk me off the window ledge" calls from friends who are panicked that Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States. But I'm happy to not be getting them now.