Bad News: Iowa — pretty much everyone has chalked it up to a loss, barring a total Trump collapse. It’s the state where demographics support Trump the most — more whites without college degrees, extremely white state. So that isn’t a shock. Ohio — the polls are turning in our direction, but the early vote is massively underperforming. Wisconsin — where we have new strict anti-voting provisions pushed through by Scott Walker, we are also significantly underperforming.
Good News: We are crushing it in NC and FL. And if you give trump OH, WI, and IA, and throw in NV, NH, and UT for good measure, if HRC wins NC and FL it’s over and it’s not even close.
Politico: Early voting shows warning signs for Trump: www.politico.com/…
Trump allies in Iowa point to daily absentee ballot request figures that show GOP requests exceeding Democratic requests nearly every day in October so far. And GOP figures steadily increased over the past week, in spite of — or perhaps because of — the sexual assault controversies that have dogged Trump since the publication of an "Access Hollywood" tape on Oct. 7. Early-vote experts and Republican operatives in Iowa suggested that allegations of assault served to energize Republicans who are rallying around Trump because they believe he has been unfairly attacked. Meanwhile, Democrats in Iowa have slipped sharply behind their 2012 pace in requested absentee ballots.
Our early-vote advantage in IA has been cut to 26,000. It was 100,000 in 2012.
In Ohio — despite some good anecdotal stories posted here, the numbers are pretty grim, given that the OH GOP has totally abandoned Trump.
Democrats last week were about 16 percent behind their 2012 ballot request rate in Cuyahoga, the most populous county in the state. By Friday, they had slipped to 17.5 percent behind.
“The ballot requests are just anemic,” he said.
For the good news — here is just a taste of FL goodness:
Robby Mook told reporters in a press call Thursday that 180,000 Hispanic Floridians who didn’t vote in 2014 had requested mail-in ballots.
While 2014 is of course a down year because it’s a mid-term, this goes to the thesis that the Obama coalition isn’t going to sit 2016 out just because he’s not at the top of the ballot.
And last quote due to fair use:
Yet in both states [FL and NC], Clinton is ahead of President Barack Obama’s pace four years earlier — and the GOP trails Mitt Romney’s clip.
If you could guarantee me that HRC would win FL and NC but lose OH, WI, and IA, I would take it because it guarantees a win. However, we need to more than just win the presidency. At minimum we need to also carry the Senate so that her judges can get confirmed, and let’s try to get the house in play. I know that Hillary is thinking of expanding the map — but while that’s normally thought of as making a play for GA or AZ, maybe she could do rallies in some R+5 congressional districts trying to put those in play?