Hillary trumps The Don on most counts in polls

WASHINGTON: A mathematician, an economist, and a pollster went in for an interview and were each asked what is two plus two. Why four, of course, declared the mathematician with absolute certainty. Well, depending on certain caveats it could be four, said the economist. The pollster got up from his chair, closed the door to the room, shut the windows, drew the curtains, and asked: "What do you want it to be?"
The apocryphal -- and rather uncharitable – gag about psephologists reflects the broad skepticism about polling, which at most times is a complex exercise involving dynamic situations and evolving opinions.Even the way questions are framed, not to speak of the sample size, geography, and other biases in methodology, could skew the outcome. As the US political pundit Dick Morris famously pointed out, opinion polls showed Americans split about evenly on civil unions. But when the words 'gay marriage' (which means the same as civil union) are presented, they break 3-to-1 against it.
Still, it is a measure of how much the science of psephology has advanced that there is an abundance of polls across the world, nowhere more than in the United States, home to the first opinion poll conducted by The Aru Pennsylvanian in 1824, which showed Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States Presidency.
By the time the Literary Digest began conducting national surveys (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) by mailing out millions of postcards to correctly predict (by simply tallying the returns) the victories of Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, polling was a regular exercise. In the 1940s, George Gallup and Elmo Roper developed smaller, more scientific surveys based on a demographically representative sample, methods that have evolved in the decades since.
Still, dynamic situations and fickleness (changing) of public opinion, along with someone name MOE (margin of error), lends an uncertain quality to the surveys. Even in 2016 -- with the most sophisticated tools at its disposal -- polls have swung between leads and victory for Donald Trump to a rout for him in the Presidential elections. Some polls have Clinton and Trump running neck and neck with leads changing all the time. Different polls have predicted different outcomes.
Over the weekend, the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll of registered voters showed Hillary Clinton has opened an 8-point lead over Donald Trump after both parties' conventions -- up from 4 percentage points in mid-July. Powered by a 23 per cent support from women, Hillary leads 50-42 with gains among several other critical groups even as Trump's troubles have worsened on several fronts.
The survey showed 79 percent of Americans saying Trump doesn’t show enough respect for people he disagrees with, 70 percent express anxiety about a Trump presidency, 67 percent think he lacks the personality and temperament it takes to serve effectively, 64 percent doubt his understanding of world affairs, 63 percent see him unfavorably overall, 62 percent say he's not honest and trustworthy, 61 percent think he's unqualified for office and 60 percent think he's biased against women and minorities.
A separate Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday showed Hillary Clinton's lead over Trump narrowed to less than 3 percentage points down from nearly eight points on Monday. About 42 percent of likely voters favored Clinton, to Trump's 39 percent, and a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points meant the contest is about even.
Apparently, a week might be a long time in politics, but it might be even longer in polling.
Still, the odds, and opinion polls, tilt heavily towards Hillary Clinton becoming the 45th President of the United States. A poll of polls tracked by Real Clear Politics (RCP) of eleven separate polls showed Clinton ahead in all eleven (after both conventions) by an average of 7 points (47.5 to 40.5).
In fact, only twice since RCP began the tracking last August has Trump led -- by a whisker: by 0.2 per cent on May 24 (43.4-43.2) and by around one per cent on July 27/28.
Other than those two occasions, everything else points to a comfortable Hillary win.