Watching the presidential
debate at a restaurant in Rosemont, Pa., near Philadelphia. Early poll
results suggest the debate has improved Hillary Clinton’s standing.Credit
Mark Makela for The New York Times
The post-debate polls are beginning to trickle in, and it already seems clear that Hillary Clinton has received a bump after the first presidential debate.
A
wave of high-quality battleground state surveys released on Friday
showed her with a comfortable advantage in New Hampshire, Nevada,
Florida and Michigan. The gains suggest she might lead by as much as
five percentage points nationwide, up from about two to three points
before last Monday’s debate.
It’s
hard to know whether the shift will last. If you’ve been following The
Upshot’s coverage of polling over the last two years, you know that
we’re pretty circumspect about shifts in the polls. But no matter how
you cut it, the debate is bad news for Donald J. Trump.
As
we wrote ahead of the debate, it has been hard to make sense of the
polls over the last few months. Mrs. Clinton’s lead has bobbed up and
down, between two and eight percentage points since the spring.
To
oversimplify, there are two basic ways to interpret it. One possibility
is that every little twist and turn in polls represents a real shift in
a volatile race. If that’s the case, perhaps we’ll look back and say
that the debate was decisive: The race was very close before, and Mrs.
Clinton took a clear lead after.
The
other interpretation is that the race is stable but that the polls are
volatile, as changes in news media coverage affect the likelihood that
people respond to surveys or are judged to be likely voters. If this
idea is right, it’s harder to evaluate Mrs. Clinton’s debate bounce.
From
this point of view, big media events — like debates and the conventions
— raise equally large questions about volatility in the polls.
After
all, the polls really can change for good after a debate or a
convention. But other times, the overwhelming news coverage surrounding a
debate performance or a political convention is exactly the sort of
thing that would cause an illusory shift.
Mitt
Romney took a narrow lead after the first presidential debate in 2012,
but there is considerable evidence that his gains were exaggerated. For
that period, the Democrats became less likely than Republicans to
respond to surveys — what pollsters call differential nonresponse.
After
the first presidential debate in 2000, George W. Bush surged in the
polls — going from an 11-point deficit among likely voters to an
eight-point lead in the Gallup tracker. But half of the swing was
because of changes in who was assessed to be a “likely voter.” A postelection study found that those swings in likely-vote intention had no predictive value; it was just noise.
So
there’s good reason to be cautious about Mrs. Clinton’s rise in the
polls. But that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed out of hand. After
the first presidential debate in 2004, John Kerry truly did rally to
make it a close race.
Usually,
a good way to test the durability of a swing in the polls is to ask
whether it brings the race closer or farther from the so-called
fundamentals, like the president’s approval ratings.
A
shift that brings the polls in line with the fundamentals might be a
little likelier to last than one that cuts the other way. Mr. Kerry’s
recovery, for instance, brought the tighter race implied by Mr. Bush’s
approval ratings. Barack Obama’s gains in 2008 gave him the considerable
advantage implied by the economy and Mr. Bush’s low approval ratings.
The opposite could be said of Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Romney’s surges in 2000
and 2012.
This
year, it’s a lot harder to tell. That’s in part because there is no
incumbent president on the ballot, which always makes it a little harder
to tell where the natural resting point of a race sits. But it’s also
because Mr. Trump is such an extraordinary candidate that many analysts
believe the fundamentals will be less significant than usual.
In
lieu of the traditional fundamentals, here’s something to consider
instead: Over the longer term, Mrs. Clinton has led Mr. Trump by around
five percentage points nationally.
The
debate has bumped her poll standing back closer to her longer-term
average, and it seems plausible it could stay in that range. The debate
has also reinforced doubts about whether Mr. Trump is prepared for the
presidency. No matter how you interpret polls, Mrs. Clinton is in a
decent position with less than 40 days to go.
Hillary Clinton steered clear of the latest maelstrom around Donald Trump as she gave a speech in Florida on Friday focused on enhancing public service opportunities. Speaking
in Fort Pierce, the Democratic presidential candidate avoided naming
her Republican opponent, though she criticized him for a “strongman
approach” and said he was unlikely to embrace national service as a
priority. The speech came on a day when Trump
dominated the news with a slew of Twitter attacks on a former beauty
pageant winner, questioning her sexual history and whether Clinton helped her become a citizen. The controversy surrounding Trump’s tweets shows the challenge Clinton faces as she seeks to give voters a more uplifting message - and a reason to vote for her, not just against Tru mp. Clinton acknowledged some might question her choice of subject matter. “Some
might say well hey my gosh, you’ve only got 39 days to go, why aren’t
you out there beating up on your opponent and doing everything to get
the vote out and all the rest of it,” Clinton said. “Well, I’ll do that…But I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
