Why it's time to start paying attention to 2016 election for real
Wake up everybody! It鈥檚 time to push back from the leftover turkey and trimmings and pay attention to politics for real.
That鈥檚 because Thanksgiving is over. And Thanksgiving of the year prior to a presidential election, or a point shortly thereafter, is when Americans stop
fooling around and begin to make serious choices about which candidate they back.
This isn鈥檛 just an old pundits鈥� story, the sort of 鈥渢ruism鈥� they relate on Fox/MSNBC when the shouting narrative lags. There is math that backs this up, particularly in regards to the key early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Run the numbers from past elections, and you鈥檒l see that the predictive power of polls of Iowa and New Hampshire voters turns upward about a week and a half after Turkey Day, according to David Byler, an election analyst for . It steadily increases after that.
That means it鈥檚 about the day to stop dismissing those polls with a hand wave and the phrase, 鈥淚t鈥檚 early yet.鈥� It no longer is.
Does this mean Donald Trump has a real chance? He鈥檚 had a steady lead in New Hampshire since late July. He鈥檇 led in Iowa most of the way through that same period.
Not necessarily. Campaign time is not linear, as Nate Silver, prediction guru of the , says. You don鈥檛 get a medal for each month you lead when it is a year-and-a-half out.
Ask Hillary Clinton about that. In 2007, she had a steady lead in Iowa through late summer and fall. Then she fell behind Barack Obama in December, about a month prior to the Iowa caucuses. He ended up winning the state, and eventually the White House.
Rudy Giuliani had an even worse reversal. He led national polls of Republican hopefuls for pretty much all of 2007. Then actual voting began. He lost both Iowa and New Hampshire (two states where his support had always lagged) and his support elsewhere quickly evaporated.
These analogies aren鈥檛 perfect, of course. Unlike Trump, Giuliani was vying to be the GOP establishment鈥檚 choice. Turned out, he wasn鈥檛. Hillary Clinton is . . . not Donald Trump. In many, many ways.
So yes, The Donald has a chance. So far he鈥檚 been able to say pretty much anything without eroding his base of 25 to 30 percent support. Will that continue, particularly in Iowa and New Hampshire? Time will tell, starting about now.
