Christie only loses Minnesota by 6 but only holds Alaska by 1? Man this is going to be a loony tunes map.
Next Poll:
Clinton within 5 of Oklahoma!
Christie/Clinton is producing some pretty strange numbers, but Rubio/Christie is also pretty weird. Rubio does so poorly that he loses heavily Republican Alaska to Clinton by 1 point, yet he only loses Minnesota to her by 13? If enough Republicans are switching over to Clinton in states like AK, KY, and TX, then shouldn't Rubio be getting absolutely massacred in Minnesota?
I think, perhaps, the reason why we're seeing polls that show unexpectedly close races everywhere has something to do with the fact that in these hypothetical matchups, we have an unusually large number of people willing to cross over from their normal partisan voting patterns. That would tend to lead both Democratic and Republican states to become less so, rather than to have them fly out to the extremes.
A couple of related sub-points on this:
-The polls do show a bit more crossover voting at this early stage than, say, the 2012 Obama/Romney exit poll showed.
-This might be in part just a consequence of the fact that it's early, the potential candidates haven't become figures of partisan identity politics yet. Some marginal Republicans feel more comfortable saying that they support Clinton, or Democrats that they support Christie or even Rubio. By the time we get to Nov. 2016, this will change, as partisan affiliations lock in.
-Look at the gender gap on both Christie/Clinton and Rubio/Clinton in some of these polls. It's enormous. Bigger than in 2012, and bigger than any election for which we have data:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/gender-gap-near-historic-highs/It could be that sex is trumping partisan affiliation in this hypothetical man vs. woman race. Some women who might otherwise vote Republican back Clinton, and some men who might otherwise vote Democrat vote Christie or Rubio. Since the male/female ratio is basically the same everywhere, this could help lead to more states being competitive. It could also help explain why the age gap seems to have been flattened, at least for voters above 30.
Anyway, we need some more polls of Democratic leaning states to see if this apparent trends towards every state being closer than expected is real.
