An Update On Polling

I wrote yesterday about the distortions in polls that come from the pollster deciding what the turnout will be on election day and how it will be split between GOP, Democrat and independent voters.  The main outlier on this basis is the ABC News tracking poll which shows Clinton up by 12% among likely voters.  ABC assumes that we will see an electorate that will be more slanted towards Democrats than in any recent election ... and by a lot.  One has to wonder if ABC and its pollster decided that they would put out a poll that overstates support for Hillary in order to discourage the Trump supporters from voting for a "lost cause". 

Let me put this into proper context.  The Real Clear Politics average of all recent polls is made up of ten national polls take in the last week.  Hillary is leading in that average by 5 percent.  If you remove the ABC tracking poll from the average, however, the other nine polls taken together show Hillary with a lead of 3.9%.  About a week ago, Hillary's lead was just under 8%, so even with the ABC tracking poll there is a clear trend towards Trump. 

There is a big difference in a lead of 5% and one of only 3.9%.  It is a particularly important difference if the pollster is trying to depress the turnout among GOP voters.  The truth is that as of today, the race is still quite close and getting closer.