HUFFPOLLSTER: 2016 Could Be The Year Of The Third Parties

Third parties could see unusually high support in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s post-convention numbers  look promising for Democrats. And America’s voter turnout rate lags behind most of its peers. Sad!  This is HuffPollster for Wednesday, August 3, 2016.

THIRD-PARTY VOTERS AND NONVOTERS ARE IN A UNIQUE POSITION THIS YEAR - Samantha Neal: “Disaffected voters who refuse to support either Trump or Clinton are increasingly turning to third-party alternatives. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson is currently polling at a level of support higher than third parties in the previous four election cycles: 8.5 percent, according to the HuffPost Pollster general election average . At this point in the 2012 election , Johnson polled at only 3 percent. The most popular third party candidate in 2008 and 2004 was Green Party nominee Ralph Nader , who averaged between 3 and 4 percentage points….Johnson’s impact in the general election becomes more pronounced at the state level: He’s polling at high single digits in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to July research from Quinnipiac University . Factoring in Green Party candidate Jill Stein, the third-party candidates collectively occupy between 11 and 13 percent of the vote share in those states.” [HuffPost ]

CLINTON’S CONVENTION BOUNCE IS MORE PROMISING THAN TRUMP’S - Nate Cohn: “At the end of a series of tumultuous events and two political conventions, the presidential race is more or less where it was before it all began: Hillary Clinton has a clear lead. All seven national surveys conducted since the Democratic convention show her ahead, by an average of nearly seven percentage points. It’s a seven-point boost over where those same surveys showed the race after the Republican convention — enough to erase Donald Trump ’s bounce and more. She is about three points ahead of where she was before the two conventions. Convention bounces often prove to be short-lived, as the name implies and as Mr. Trump’s experience proves….With that history in mind, Mrs. Clinton’s lead would be expected to fade a bit over the next few weeks. But her comfortable advantage in the post-convention polls suggests that her support can fade and that she can still maintain a clear lead. There are also reasons to think that Mrs. Clinton’s bounce is likelier to stick than most. In general, convention bounces are most durable when they help unify the parties — something that’s largely inevitable and hard to undo.” [NYT ]

WHY ‘SHY TRUMPERS’ PROBABLY DON’T EXIST - HuffPollster, with Sam Stein: “Former poll lover Donald Trump , now trailing in post-convention surveys, has come up with a new theory to explain why he’s not ahead: His supporters are lying to pollsters. While ‘people are too embarrassed to admit they support me’ may not be an especially winning campaign message, the idea itself isn’t particularly far-fetched. Pollsters recognize something called social desirability bias, when voters are reluctant to tell an interviewer they hold an unpopular position….But pollsters for both parties say there is little evidence to suggest that Trump is facing a similar issue….Trump did not reliably outperform the polls in actual voting during the Republican primaries…[D]ata from HuffPost Pollster’s tracking of the presidential race suggest that support for Trump varies little between live-interviewer surveys and those conducted online or using automated calls.” [HuffPost ]

VOTER TURNOUT IN THE U.S. IS LOWER THAN IN MANY OTHER COUNTRIES - Drew DeSilver - “With less than 100 days left till the U.S. presidential election, we thought it was time for a fresh look at how U.S. voter turnout – regularly decried as dismal – compares with other developed democracies. As is so often the case, the answer is a lot more complicated than the question. Political scientists typically measure turnout by looking at votes cast as a percentage of eligible voters. Since many hard-to-measure factors can affect eligibility (citizenship, imprisonment, residency rules and other legal barriers), in practice turnout calculations usually are based on the estimated voting-age population. By that measure, the U.S. lags most of its peers, landing 31st among the 35 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , most of whose members are highly developed, democratic states.” [Pew Research ]

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WEDNESDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:

-Harry Enten profiles anti-Trump Republicans. [538 ]

-A surprising Utah survey turned out to be non-existent. [HuffPost ]

-Fewer Americans plan to watch the Summer Olympics this year than in previous years. [Gallup ]

-A new report finds the number of refugees seeking asylum in Europe surging to a record 1.3 million. [Pew Global ]

-A new poll shows the British public on a “collision course” with French and Germans over the terms of Brexit. [YouGov ]

-Seven percent of Americans claim to be “very familiar” with a fictional person. [Ipsos ]