2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Ok then, Let's spell it out for Hillary "Democrats" [View all]BzaDem
(11,142 posts)Is it from a poll that also predicts she will win the general election? If so, why do you give it credence?
Other than two Rasmussen polls, the last 56 of 58 national polls show Clinton winning against Trump (by an average of 7 points). Some of those polls might show Clinton losing independents. But if those same polls show her winning the general, then that is likely caused by the pollster not pushing very hard for the voter to give the party they are leaning towards. As a result, many Republican leaners were included in the pool of independents.
The "unskewed polls" crowd got bit by this in 2012. They kept looking at polls showing Obama losing independents, ignoring the fact that those very same polls showed Obama winning overall. Sure enough, Obama won overall.
So if you want to argue that Clinton is weak among independents and that this actually matters, you need to look at polls that show Clinton losing both independents and overall. As I said, those are few and far between, because Clinton has a stubborn habbit of winning nearly all polls against Trump so far (usually by a lot).