I have been saying for some time that i think this election will be quite close. Economic indicators, recent electoral precedent, the difficulty of pulling off a Presidential hat-trick and the polarization of the parties all point to a pretty narrow contest.

There is a lot of panic going around in Democratic and Progressive circles right now about the momentum Trump is gaining. But there are two reasons i’m not terribly concerned about this. Or more accurately, no more concerned than i have been since Trump’s nomination.

Firstly, most of his support seems to be coming from a rising percentage of Republicans swinging at last behind his candidacy. As election day draws ever nearer, the anti-trump holdouts in the Republican base are being forced into the stark choice of abandoning their traditional home in the Red team and going Blue. And most seem to have balked at the prospect. Clinton is not losing ground so much as Trump is gaining it as previously ‘undecided’ voters who lean Republican fall in line.

The map supports this analysis. The states where Trump has had the biggest gains over the last week are those swing states that trend more Republican, such as Ohio and Florida where he now appears to have a small lead.

This is bad for Clinton, as these are the kind of people she was trying to attract to her candidacy. But you can’t please all the people all the time, and she has attracted meaningful support from groups like college educated white voters who usually vote Republican by a large margin. So it is not really a sign of failure as much as a measure of how negatively party supporters view the opposing side. Even Trump can’t convince these people to vote Democratic.

Secondly, the advantage of having more viable paths to 270 electoral votes is that it aids you in close contests. For instance, Trump can’t really win without Pennsylvania where he is still behind. Whereas Clinton really doesn’t need Pennsylvania that badly anymore. She can win with Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina while losing the Keystone State.

It seems clear to me that Clinton’s map is receding back towards a more normal Democratic victory in the mode of ’08 or ’12. Trump takes Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Arizona (the more Republican leaning swing states) where Clinton was only really ahead by a large margin when Trump was at his lowest ebb.

Trump winning Georgia and Arizona is not something we should be terribly concerned about. Those states were never core parts of Clinton’s strategy and usually vote solidly Republican. This is in a real sense Trump returning to the baseline performance expected from those areas. The fact his hold on them is still so tenuous is an indictment of his weakness as a candidate.

So yes, the race is tightening. But no, that is not cause for panic. As far as i can tell we are still tracking the outcome that conventional wisdom should always have predicted. A moderate Clinton victory based on high support from Hispanic voters and college educated whites.

That is consistent with what we are seeing. Clinton is over-performing in states with arge college-educated and minority populations and under-performing in states with higher shares of non-college educated White voters (Trump’s base). That is why Ohio looks more red than Virginia right now, even though that is the opposite of how it used to be.

Also, don’t expect polls to all be consistent. If you are ahead by four points (as it seems plausible Clinton currently is) you should expect some polls to show you a little behind and some to show you far ahead once you account for margin of error and differing methodologies amongst pollsters.

But it ain’t over yet. There is still a week before the election. They tell me the world was created in less.

 

 

The last few days have seen an eruption of coverage talking about Hillary Clinton and Emails and intimations of impropriety. It was front page news in most of the swing-state papers at least once while the internet ran wild in characteristic fashion. But what is all this actually about?

FBI Director James Comey announced recently  that they would be looking at some newly discovered emails to see if there was any evidence of illegal activity on the part of Clinton or her office.

That really is about it. They don’t know what is in them, they don’t have any reason to believe that some terrible secret lurks within. Some may be copies of emails already examined, some may be irrelevant and of course some may be incriminating. That is the thing with investigations, you don’t really know until you look. At this stage its all very vague.

But true to form the media has reported this story in a way i find rather pathetic. Instead of some formulation such as ‘FBI to examine Weiner emails’ they have gone with ‘Clinton Probe Renewed’. Which, aside from being untrue (it hasn’t been renewed) is also misleading in its impression that there is new evidence of misconduct.

Nor is it, as i have seen five separate outlets claim, an ‘explosive revelation’. Director Comey testified months ago that the investigation was over. Now there are more emails that might be relevant, so he has told everyone that they are going to look in to them. That’s it.

I say they might be relevant because not only were the emails not necessarily to or from Clinton, there is no reason to believe that they were ever even on her much discussed private email server. The messages were obtained from the computer of former Rep. Anthony Weiner who is also the husband of long-time Clinton aide and confidant Huma Abedin, not from Clinton’s email server or indeed any device associated with her.

Journalists and editors may say that they are just reporting the news, but that cuts no ice with me. This isn’t news. If they find something, that will be news. They might say that they think it is news, and its their job to report everything that might be relevant. In which case they are idiots, insensible of the responsibilities of their profession and the tremendous power they hold. Because there is a reason they write headlines the way they do. They know people often don’t read the story. Which leads us to the third excuse i have heard: That we need to compete in a crowded media marketplace, so we need to write stories that will get views and draw attention. To which i would reply that drawing attention for its own sake is the function of a performing seal, not a responsible journalist.

Let me be clear. Reporting negative stories about Hillary Clinton is not my problem right now. I do have a problem with that, because there has been a concerted smear campaign against her for at least two decades orchestrated by elements of the Right-Wing. My problem is the wiling acquiescence of the news media to that project. As if they didn’t know they were being played. As if they didn’t know that this is exactly what the Republicans wanted when they started the ridiculous ‘Benghazi Committee’ to trawl through Clintons documents looking for something they could throw at her.

Articles that start with phrases like ‘fresh accusations have come to light’ or ‘possible misconduct’ are deliberately leading people to believe the story is much sexier than it is right now. And i get it, Media is a business. They all have mortgages. But there is a cost to this kind of uncritical pandering for attention, and that cost is paid by the political process the integrity of which we all rely upon. If all you are doing is reporting what was said without critique, you are not a journalist. You are a glorified stenographer. You may as well be working for Cuban state media if you just relay whatever message comes down from on high like an obedient town crier.

Make no mistake, if it turns out there is an message amongst this batch  where Clinton is selling state secrets to the Chinese or something I’ll turn on a dime. But until then implying otherwise is an act of gross journalistic irresponsibility. Because as much as they don’t like to admit it, journalists are responsible for the stories they write and the way those stories are interpreted and influence the ongoing narrative of the campaign.

So will this have much effect on the campaign? I’m inclined to say no. For two reasons. Firstly, this ‘scandal’ has been going so long i think its already baked in. People already think Clinton’s emails were wrong in some nebulous sense (Thanks, Media!) and i don’t see this changing many minds. Secondly, one of the benefits of a polarized political system is it makes it difficult for voters to switch from one to the other. I just don’t think there are that many people who would be going for Clinton who now might switch to Trump.

Couple this with the lead Clinton had going in to this and i think the 1-2 point drop it is reasonable to expect is unlikely to materially damage her electoral prospects.

So all in all, much ado about nothing. A storm in a teacup stirred up by a media complex unable to properly perform its role and a citizenry uninterested in reading more than the banner headline. But that isn’t new. This is a problem that has been growing for years. And its not just Clinton who it has hurt, or indeed just Democrats, but she is the one it is hurting most right now.