Toni And the email issue may not resonate quite as much four months from now, especially if Republicans batter it into the ground.  Nate It might still resonate quite a bit, but it’s hard for it to resonate much more. I think it’s going to be interesting to see where she’s at after the convention, after she gets some strong character witnesses in President Obama and Elizabeth Warren.  Toni Earlier, you mentioned, “I’m not sure we’ll get to find out” about a better measure of the race “since the convention is just around the corner.” We’re heading into a “noisy” season with polling. Can you explain?  Nate Generally, a candidate gets a “bounce” of a few points after a convention. This year, it’s pretty messy. The two conventions basically happen back to back. It’ll be hard to read too much into the polls for a few weeks with the conventions (unless Trump leads coming out of Clinton’s convention, which would obviously be a very strong sign for him). The good news, though, is that the polls start getting fairly accurate a few weeks after the conventions.  So that’s something to look forward to.  Toni Let’s turn to some of her positive results, and they got more positive as the day wore on. Colorado was particularly a bright spot. Fox had her up by 10 points, and Monmouth by 13.  Nate Yeah, that’s a great result for her. It’s not hard to see why it could be a good state for her: It’s very well educated and it has an above-average Latino vote. The same story basically holds in Virginia, where the Fox poll also showed her doing well.  Almost there: Why the Colorado-Virginia combo can be so powerful for Democrats. https://t.co/Vn7QAGYmp5 #2016election  And I think it’s worth remembering that Virginia and Colorado would basically be almost enough to get Clinton over the top.  If you give her all of the states carried by Obama where she’s not airing advertisements (which includes Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), then Colorado and Virginia would get her to 269 electoral votes. It would only take one more, and she has a lot of options. It’s hard to look at the polling right now and say that Trump has a discernible edge in any battleground, even if a few — like Ohio and Iowa — look very close.  Toni I was going to ask you about Ohio and Iowa. We’ve gotten quite a few polls from those states recently, and they seem dead even.  Nate It does seem that way. Iowa and Ohio are two states where Democrats are heavily dependent on less-educated white voters. Same story in Wisconsin, where Clinton was up by just 4 points today. In all three states, Clinton is running about 3 or 4 points worse than Obama four years ago. It’s kind of the reverse of Colorado and Virginia.  Toni But a slight difference with Wisconsin; it has been consistently leaning for Clinton.  My point is just that it’s a state where she’s underperforming Obama, unlike the states where Romney was more dependent on well-educated voters like Colorado and Virginia.  Donald Trump at 0% (that's zero) among black voters in 2 surveys today—Marist's OH poll & and Marist's PA poll. (h/t @NKingofDC)  Toni The map you discussed supposes she’ll win Pennsylvania, and we had some divergent results in the state today. We also had this tidbit:  Trump, 40% — Clinton, 40%  Trump, 0% — Clinton, 91%  It cannot be possible that Trump is getting 0 percent support from black voters. I mean, he made a big production of “my African-American” a while back.  Nate Ha-ha, well, he’s probably not actually getting zero percent of the black vote.  But here, let’s use some data. I have this polling data from 2012 loaded on my computer. It’s 20,000 interviews, or about 24 times more respondents than the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll in Pennsylvania.  In that data set, there are 1,881 black respondents, and just 55 of them supported Romney. So in 2012 you would have expected there to be about two voters who were black and supported Mitt Romney in an NBC/WSJ/Marist-sized national poll. With numbers like that, you’re going to get more than a few polls where there are no black voters for the G.O.P.  And here’s a flashback from 2012, from the NBC/WSJ poll heading into the G.O.P. convention: Obama ahead 94-0 among black voters.  Toni That makes sense, but maybe you’re ruining it — the zero somehow seems more meaningful. (Like turning the stereo up to 11.)  Nate Here’s something fun: In my data set, which includes 880 respondents from Pennsylvania, the black vote was 99-0 for Obama (and that’s with 60 black respondents).  I don’t think it’s very meaningful. We know that Clinton is up by a huge margin among black voters. There are going to be polls where Trump gets zero black voters.  Toni One thing that’s very meaningful is whether Clinton can win Pennsylvania. You mentioned one overall path to victory, through Colorado and Virginia. It’s also true that if the Democrats hold onto Pennsylvania and win Virginia and Florida, it’s essentially game over. But we didn’t learn that much from the Pennsylvania results today, did we?  Nate No, it was a split decision, with Quinnipiac showing a tight race and NBC/WSJ/Marist showing a considerable Clinton lead. I’m inclined to lean toward NBC/WSJ/Marist, considering that the Clinton campaign isn’t taking Pennsylvania especially seriously [no ad spending, although a pro-Clinton super PAC is spending money there]. But it’d be nice to have more data there.  Toni It was a rich day of polling. If you had to assess Clinton’s national lead right now, what would you say, 3 points? Four points? That’s a pretty close race against a candidate who has struggled in many ways.  Nate I’d probably say 4 or 5 points, but that’s not very well-informed. The newest data does provide reason to pause and wonder whether the race has gotten even tighter, even if the preponderance of evidence doesn’t point that way quite yet. The only other thing I’d say, though, is that we know Clinton has had a rough week or two. The polls are going to bump around, and I think there’s reason to think this is a relatively low point.  On Wednesday, Nate and Toni looked at the groups Donald Trump would win if the election were held today.
A politics chat includes a look at a close race and a very busy day of polls — and what to make of them.