McClatchy/Marist C+7

[Virginiá]

The white share of the electorate probably isn't declining by 5% in one election. 70% seems more realistic.

That does seem excessive, but I don't think it changes the poll that much. To do a little pro-Trump unskewing here, if you substitute in 3 more points of white voters (so 70% now), going by the share from 2012, you could maybe up to 1.5 (give or take) more points for Trump.

Either way, this poll is not out of line with other recent national polls.

[Virginiá]

3.  It also under samples Non-College degree whites at about 51-52% of the white vote vs 55% in 2012.

It's worth noting that the non-college share of the white vote is declining in some places as rapidly as the white vote in general. As the Millennial generation continues to age up/into the electorate, and older whites die off, the educated share of the white electorate will continue to grow.

[Virginiá]

That's certainly true but I doubt it will fall 3.5% in one election especially when Trump is supposed to energize this portion of the electorate.  Also turnout among non college whites is already massively reduced vs college educated whites.  In 2012 it was 55% of the white vote vs over 67% in the white general population.

The whole election probably depends on whether Trump can turnout an unusually high number of non-college whites.  If the proportion falls at all from 2012 I doubt it will even be close.

That's true, but I frequently wonder if non-college whites will have a big surge this year. Trump has no real GOTV effort to get these people to the polls, and the RNC's game is not that strong and is tasked with turning out voters for downticket races, so not necessarily focusing on entirely on what Trump needs. Another issue I see is that for the same reason these voters are getting energized, Trump is also triggering an opposing reaction from minority voters, which will help cancel out some of the non-college white surge.

It also might be possible that the craziness of this election might have only staved off an inevitable drop in turnout across the board, and thus may have stabilized the non-college white numbers.. but, I also think there are more problems with this little theory.

We'll see. I just think Trump's lack of a ground game is going to cost him in the end. Where he might have been able to fuel a bigger surge, now he will have to settle for whatever reality gives him.

[Virginiá]

It's possible that even without a massive surge in enthusiasm, that Hispanics still turn out in large numbers. I don't know. Predicting turnout is a pretty dicey affair. If it makes a difference, last I recall Hispanics rated this election as very important to vote in, in large numbers.

But I must admit, it's very hard for me to see anything less than at least a few points increase in turnout for Hispanics this year. The mitigating factor in my mind is that almost half of the Hispanic electorate is composed of Millennials, and that age group in general has always had turnout rates lower than older folks. Hispanic Millennials are notorious for having arguably the lowest turnout rates (save for maybe Asian voters), so I have to wonder if they will finally get up and vote in large numbers this year. It's certainly possible - black Millennials had, iirc, upwards of 57% or so turnout in 2012.

However, I'm a little bit peeved that Democrats didn't push massive investment in registering/GOTV for Hispanics this cycle. As far as I can tell, the investment isn't particularly noteworthy. Several prominent groups involved in registering Hispanic voters (Mi Familia Vota for instance) said they were suffering from a lack of investment compared to 2012. Perhaps Democrats set up a bigger operation on their own? Or maybe the more likely answer is that they wanted to be cheap and thought Trump alone would do the work for them, probably so they could have more money to waste on useless advertisements. Not sure though. I hope I'm wrong.

[Virginiá]

Something else worth noting here is this:

Generic Congressional Poll
---------------------------------------------
18 to 29 : 63% - 33% D
30 to 44 : 49% - 46% D
45 to 59 : 50% - 43% D
60 or older : 43% - 53% R

Overall: +4 points Democratic for the House PV.

Democrats still look poised to absolutely dominate with 18-29 year olds in other races, so their hatred of Clinton seems isolated for now. More interesting, imo, is how older Millennials and young GenXers (30-44) are much closer even when the party ID for that group is almost as Democratic as 18-29 (per recent pew survey). The 45-59 is surprising as well, but not too surprising. Those are younger boomers and older GenXers, of which the younger boomers grew up partly under Nixon, leaving them more Democratic-leaning than older boomers.

Regardless, given this poll and basically every other Congressional poll, Democrats look poised to win the House PV by anywhere from 4 - 6 points or more this cycle, if Clinton wins. That's a huge improvement on 2012. Might get us upwards of 20 - 26 seats if we get lucky.