The Post-Convention Polls Are In And Trump Has A Lot Of Ground To Make Up

[DonViejo]

slew of post-convention polls has set the stage for the rest of the presidential race, and Donald Trump has a long way to go.

The first batch of top line numbers are in, and they show Hillary Clinton pulling away from the narrow lead she had over Trump going into last month’s conventions. Her lead, in polls taken in the last few days, varies from three to nine percentage points, depending on which poll you’re looking at.

The challenge now for Trump is cutting into the major deficits he is facing among certain groups where he trails not just Clinton, but Mitt Romney’s levels in 2012: groups like college-educated voters, which Romney won by 4 percentage points in exit polls, but where Trump is now losing in the double digits, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. Trump will also likely need to improve his leads among groups where he is already outperforming past Republicans.

“If you’re down by eight or nine points, it’s hard to micro-target your way to victory. You’ve got to build the entire audience, because any subgroup can’t make up that big of a gap,” Douglas Usher, a pollster for Purple Strategies, told TPM. “You have to right the ship and improve your overall standing.”

-snip-

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trump-clinton-convention-polls

[democrattotheend]

1. Microtargeting? He could start by campaigning in states that make sense

He is doing events this week in Maine and New York. Maine I can kind of understand because of the split electoral votes, although it seems silly that he is devoting time to that one electoral vote when he is trailing in so many bigger swing states.

And campaigning in New York is just nuts. It's one thing to force an opponent to defend a state they had taken for granted, but that only works if you pose some credible threat to scare your opponent into playing defense. Campaigning in a state that Obama won with 63% of the vote in 2012 and that Hillary represented for 8 years in the Senate is not playing offense - it's playing stupid.

[longship]

2. "...is not playing offense - it's playing stupid"

[auntpurl]

3. Don't give him ideas.

I hope he spends a couple of weeks in New York. And I hope somehow Bloomberg gets on TV on election night and announces the landslide victory for Hillary in his state.