The LA Times poll showed a Clinton lead for a good portion of August. And you can't just start excluding perceived outliers from polling averages without messing up the average. There are likely to be supposed pro-Clinton outliers on the other side that move the average the other way.
I also think talk of polls being "junk" is way premature. You really won't know which poll is junk until after the election.
Even in August her lead in that poll seemed less in line with the others. Either it's onto something big that no other polls are, or it's quite a bit more Republican to the point of uselessness. Is there an outlier on the level of LA Times/USC for Clinton/Democrats? I don't see one as obvious as this USC poll but I could be wrong.
Anyway, you're right. We won't know until after the election. If you look at my history in this board, I rarely call polls junk, but this one is consistently riding on its own track and to me it just seems useless. Right now it's T+5, a 10-11 point difference from the recent Fox/CNN polls, and that is two USC polls in a row with a lot of overlap after the debate. Doesn't add up to me.
And that does seem to be what it's doing. With the other factors in mind, I don't see why I should give this nearly the same credit as other polls.. So, I won't. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-polling-differences-20160809-snap-story.html
