Horowitz: Hillary Clinton in the Driver’s Seat

Tuesday, November 08, 2016

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

As people go to cast their votes today in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and through the nation, mainly choosing between the two most unpopular major party candidates for President in the history of modern polling, all indications are that Hillary Clinton is very much in the driver’s seat.

While a Trump victory remains a possibility and some analysts, such as Nate Silver, rate his odds of winning to be as much as 1-in-3, Hillary Clinton enters election day with about a 4 point lead in the national polls, a far superior election day operation and multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.

It looked good for Clinton before FBI Director took much of the power out of Trump’s closing argument that we should not elect someone under criminal investigation by declaring that the FBI’s examination of the emails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer did not surface any new evidence that would cause him to revisit his decision in the summer that no reasonable Prosecutor would bring a case against the former Secretary of State for her use of a private email server.

Polls conducted in the wake of Comey’s original letter to Congress sent out the week before indicating that the FBI had discovered a new cache of emails that could be pertinent to the presumed closed Clinton case, predictably showed a tightening race. But by mid-last week, the impact of this announcement had begun to wear off, and Clinton began to once again increase her lead.

More telling, the party and demographic composition of early voters, now north of 30 million, contains much good news for Clinton. The dramatic up-tick in Latino turnout, for example, has probably already put Nevada out of reach for Trump and appears to be giving Cinton an edge in Florida—two critical battleground states which are just about must wins for the Businessman and former Reality Star.

Given Trump’s racially charged rhetoric about, Latinos, his demagoguery on the issue of immigration and his hard-edged anti-immigration policy positions, it would be only fitting if the main driver of his defeat was a record Latino vote.

In an electorate that wants ‘change’’, and was teed up for a Republican victory, Donald Trump should have the political wind at his back. But a majority of voters believe he has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to serve as Commander in Chief. In contrast, while a majority of voters have an unfavorable perception of Hillary Clinton, they do believe she has the right temperament and qualifications to occupy the oval office. If Clinton emerges the victor tonight, it will be in mainly because voters decided that Donald Trump was a ‘too risky’ choice.

My guess is we are looking at at least a 5 point Clinton popular vote victory and for her to amass more than 300 electoral votes-the kind of victory that will make Trump’s dangerous and absurd charges of the ‘election being rigged’ seem as absurd as they are.

If I am wrong, you all know where to find me.

Much more important than predictions by me or anyone else, however, vote today, no matter for whom you plan to vote.. It is not only a right; it is an responsibility of citizenship in what remains the world’s greatest democracy.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, elected official and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at University of Rhode Island

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Horowitz: Hillary Clinton in the Driver’s Seat

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