-By Warner Todd Huston
Staring in the middle of October the presidential race was already beginning to move toward the Republicans. But with last week’s announcement by FBI Director James Comey that the Bureau was opening a new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s illicit private email server hidden in her New York home when she was Obama’s Secretary of State, the race took a major lurch in favor of GOP nominee Donald Trump’. But with less than a week until Election Day, will that movement be enough to push Trump over the top?
Even before FBI Director Comey’s October 21 announcement the polls began to move in Trump’s favor. By the end of October just before the FBI announcement many of the polls had become statistical ties as time and again Trump had closed to within the margin of error — or close to it — both in national as well as many state-based surveys.
The polls began to tighten so much that many pollsters began to worry that their turnout models were built on incorrect assumptions of higher Democrat turnout.
Another thing that should worry pollsters is the incredible turnout at Trump rallies in comparison to the turnout at Clinton rallies. Trump commonly speaks before tens of thousands of supporters. In fact, it is just as common to see hundreds if not thousands who turn out to Trump rallies but end up not even able to get into the venues. On the other hand Hillary has been lucky to assemble a thousand supporters at a time.
But all this was even before the FBI’s announcement. After the news broke Trump’s drive accelerated.
Since last Friday there have been a long series of signs appearing that seems to auger bad tidings for the Clinton campaign.
In no particular order…
According to an IBD/TIPP Poll, Trump’s problems with woman have been getting better. In only a few days Trump’s deficit with women lost five points. As of November 1, the number of women who said they are supporting Trump outright jumped from 34 percent to 39 percent.
It is interesting to note that Mitt Romney had achieved the same level of support among women back in 2012.
But the poll had other good news for Trump. “What’s more, Trump is doing slightly better with independents than Romney — 48% support Trump vs. 46% who backed Romney,” IBD reported.
Also on November 1, a Bloomberg report said that the U.S. stock market is suddenly not going Clinton’s way.
The performance of the S&P 500 Index has signaled the outcome of every presidential election since 1984, according to an analysis by Strategas Research Partners LLC. A gain in the benchmark for American equity in the three months prior to the vote has seen the incumbent party win 86 percent of the time since 1928. Right now, the benchmark gauge is down 3.6 percent since Aug. 8 with just a week until the vote, a fact that in isolation augurs well for Donald Trump.
Then there is the professor who’s election model has predicted every single past election correctly and who insists that Trump will turn up the victor next week.
Allan J. Lichtman, a history professor at American University and author of Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House, says that his model has been 100% right for the last three decades and if his model is used on all previous applicable election it also correctly predicts who will win. Using his model, Lichtman says Trump will win the White House.
Even the price of the Mexican Peso has plummeted over news of Trump’s surge in the polls. According to Fox News Latino, the Peso has lost 10 percent of its value over the last few weeks.
Interestingly, even a gay advocacy group has come out to endorse Donald J. Trump for president. Whereas other Log Cabin Republican groups have shied from endorsing the real estate mogul, the LGBTQ Log Cabin Republicans of Miami, Florida, recently decided to break with its national organization to fully endorse the GOP nominee.
“Our membership has gotten behind the Republican national nominee and it’s unfortunate that other Republicans are unable to do so,” the Florida group said in a statement. “Regardless of differences, we understand that a Hillary Clinton presidency is only going to be detrimental to the LGBT community and the general American population.”
Meanwhile national polls have been showing Clinton and Trump trading places at the top of the race. A new WRAL/SurveyUSA poll even found Trump surging ahead of Clinton in North Carolina, something the Republican has been struggling to do.
Early voting numbers in Florida also seem to be showing a dead heat and this is likely something that should really worry the Clinton camp.
This and more has all left the Democrats squirming very uncomfortably.
Take the November 1 report of the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll which, as the D.C.-based The Hill newspaper said, was sending shock waves through Democrat circles.
The Hill noted that the poll “found GOP nominee Donald Trump leading Democrat Hillary Clinton by a single percentage point among likely voters.”
“The poll also found that ‘strong enthusiasm’ for Clinton had eroded by 7 points in recent days,” the paper reported.
But is it any wonder that the polls have been breaking for Trump. After all, this week has seen an avalanche of troubling news coming out of Clintonland.
Let’s just run down a few of these bad stories:
Starting late last week, we had the story of FBI chief Comey announcing that the Bureau was re-launching its investigation into Hillary’s illegal email server.
Worse, it was soon noted that the thing that kick started the new investigation was the tens of thousands of Hillary’s emails discovered on the electronic devices owned by pervy and disgraced New York Congressman Anthony Weiner. The emails were discovered as both the feds and local authorities were investigating him on charges of sexually molesting a teenager from North Carolina. As it happens, Mr. Weiner is the husband of Hillary’s long-time top aide Huma Abedin. Also as it happens she seems to have told the FBI she had none of Hillary’s emails on her own private devices — this now appears to be a lie since tens of thousands of them have been found on devices she and her husband own jointly. Even The New York Times called Weiner’s part in this his “unwelcome return” to vex Democrats.
Fox News then reported on Monday that a Clinton aide left classified material lying around… in China! CHINA!
News also leaked that the FBI has launched five separate corruption cases against high profile Democrats in Clinton’s inner circle.
Another story that has hurt Democrats is last week’s report that Obamacare insurance costs will skyrocket next year quite despite Obama’s claim that they never would if his take over of the nation’s healthcare would go into law.
Finally comes the story that CNN has fired Democrat operative Donna Brazile for colluding with the Clinton campaign by secretly supplying debate questions ahead of time to Clinton so she could better prepare for the debates.
Just this week it was reported that CNN president Jeff Zucker excoriated Brazile saying her actions were “unethical” and “disgusting.”
The Brazile story only lends even more credence to the feeling most Americans have that the media is seriously biased and hopelessly in the tank for Clinton.
All these stories and more add up to some seriously bad publicity for the Democrats. And the polls are reflecting that growing distrust the voters are feeling for Democrats. The big question with all this is, has all this movement toward the GOP come in time to bring Trump a victory next week?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as Constitution.com, CanadaFreePress.com, BizPac Review, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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