State of the race - September 23rd

I recently had some questions about a couple of NBC polls that have Hillary Clinton up by numbers out of line with other polls.  More polling has come in and it's only muddied the waters.

Firstly, the RealClearPolitics electoral college map has Hillary winning the presidency by an electoral college count of 272-266 in a no-toss-up state race.  That's just as tight as I'm seeing the race right now.

But meanwhile a McClatchy/Marist poll has come out that has Hillary Clinton up by 7 points. So maybe the NBC data isn't really all that far off.  But not so fast.

McClatchy/Marist comes up with the exact same spread in their first poll in nearly two months, but it’s actually much better for Trump than their previous result — a 48/33 outlier...

...The poll appears to slightly oversample women (54/46) and a bit more significantly undersample white voters (67%) in comparison to 2012’s exit polling (53/47, 72% respectively). The age demos are structured differently, but appear to lean a little young compared to 2012. On the partisan affiliation side, the split seems reasonable at a D+5 in both RVs and LVs.

So the sampling splits leaves it a questionable poll. But there are problems for Trump there too; his polling numbers with women, and whites are still below the numbers he needs to have a shot at winning, if the poll is accurate.

But all of this is moot. The first debate is on Monday. No stool for Clinton. No commercials, no breaks and they're expecting a record audience. Polls late next week are the polls that will really matter.