Fox News: Trump +1/Clinton +1 in 4 way

[Vosem]

It's official...

At this point we're looking a race which is a virtual tossup.

Trump has consolidated the Republican base, which has been the major driver in his recent performance in both national and state polls.

Clinton has lost support to 3rd Party candidates and undecideds/persuadables...

Her strategy over the past four weeks of trying to hammer Trump as an extremist, and try to pander to Republican voters that don't like Trump has been an epic failure.

Time to go back to the "Battle of the Bases" and actually run on her 2016 Primary policies, instead of taking the Progressive base of the Party for granted.

It is almost too late for Clinton, considering that pledging and adopting extremely progressive policies in order to defeat Bernie in the primaries, was then followed by a pivot that has done very little to back up her talk. Ultimately, among many voters she is reinforcing the narrative that she is just another Politician who will say and do anything to get elected, but at the end of the day you can't trust to follow through.

It's amazing that she basically ignored key issues for the largest generation (Millennials) in order to try to increase Trump's already huge unfavorables. She should have been building her own favorables in August, and acting consistent and not basically taking one of the largest voting blocs for granted solely based upon "Trump is.... (fill in the blanks) which most of that generation already believes to be the case.

Er, no. That's total horsesh**t. Trump has not consolidated the Republican base by any means; he's still polling in the 60s among self-described conservatives. Hillary is at 75-80 with self-described liberals. The swings in this race -- all the swings in this race -- have been between Hillary Clinton and undecided/third-party. Trump has never really been higher than 41% or so, and in fact is usually under 40. Some of the people voting third-party are in fact Stein-voting progressives, but the majority of Johnson voters and undecideds are vague centrists without much of an ideology at all who can't stand Trump but are uncertain of whether they can bring themselves to vote for Hillary. Many are likely to end up not voting at all.

[Vosem]

It's official...

At this point we're looking a race which is a virtual tossup.

Trump has consolidated the Republican base, which has been the major driver in his recent performance in both national and state polls.

Clinton has lost support to 3rd Party candidates and undecideds/persuadables...

Her strategy over the past four weeks of trying to hammer Trump as an extremist, and try to pander to Republican voters that don't like Trump has been an epic failure.

Time to go back to the "Battle of the Bases" and actually run on her 2016 Primary policies, instead of taking the Progressive base of the Party for granted.

It is almost too late for Clinton, considering that pledging and adopting extremely progressive policies in order to defeat Bernie in the primaries, was then followed by a pivot that has done very little to back up her talk. Ultimately, among many voters she is reinforcing the narrative that she is just another Politician who will say and do anything to get elected, but at the end of the day you can't trust to follow through.

It's amazing that she basically ignored key issues for the largest generation (Millennials) in order to try to increase Trump's already huge unfavorables. She should have been building her own favorables in August, and acting consistent and not basically taking one of the largest voting blocs for granted solely based upon "Trump is.... (fill in the blanks) which most of that generation already believes to be the case.

Er, no. That's total horsesh**t. Trump has not consolidated the Republican base by any means; he's still polling in the 60s among self-described conservatives. Hillary is at 75-80 with self-described liberals. The swings in this race -- all the swings in this race -- have been between Hillary Clinton and undecided/third-party. Trump has never really been higher than 41% or so, and in fact is usually under 40. Some of the people voting third-party are in fact Stein-voting progressives, but the majority of Johnson voters and undecideds are vague centrists without much of an ideology at all who can't stand Trump but are uncertain of whether they can bring themselves to vote for Hillary. Many are likely to end up not voting at all.

Fair enough.... so I'm assuming the horses**t refers to the argument that both candidates have consolidated their respective bases?

I'm not exactly sure what your sources are regarding the base consolidation regarding Clinton/Trump... I'm assuming these are national polls, since we have seen state poll after state poll in the past month showing Trump consolidating Republican support. Meanwhile, we have seen Clinton's numbers drop in similar state polls regarding the Democratic base support.

I suspect we are basically in agreement on the fundamental points, but disagree on some of the details?

I guess I phrased that a little intolerantly, since I hear this suggestion (that Hillary should go left to convince undecideds and third-party voters to vote for her) pretty frequently and it doesn't make sense to me, for the reasons I described in my post; these tend not to be overwhelmingly left-wing people, and the campaign strategy she's been pursuing (of trying to be a moderate consensus candidate) probably is the best way to persuade them to come over.

I've been looking at national polls that ask voters to self-identify ideology, rather than partisanship -- ideology tends to be a great deal less fluid. I might be upset with the Republican Party, but I won't stop being a conservative; I'm sure if you were upset with the Democratic Party, you wouldn't cease to be a progressive. So, when I see that Trump only has 2/3 of conservatives when Romney got many more, I can see that the Republican base has coalesced around him nowhere near as strongly as it did around prior nominees. Hillary is doing worse than usual too but not anywhere near as dramatically. But base consolidation wasn't really the point of my post.