As we approach the final presidential debate later tonight, the polling looks grim for Donald Trump.
In a sense, Trump never really recovered from his post Democratic convention fall, when his public feud with the Khan family wasted what had been a Trump rally after the Republican convention.
There was a rebound for a couple of weeks, as Trump maintained uncharacteristic composure and relative silence as Hillary’s email and other scandals took a toll.
But all of that went down the tubes as Trump took the bait on the “fat shaming” allegation after the first debate. Does ANYONE even remember the woman’s name at this point? She was just a Clinton prop used to set up what was to come, the NBC tape of comments about groping women and the rollout of a series of women accusing Trump of groping them in some form or another.
Now, Hillary has pulled into a consistent lead in the mid-to-high single digits in remarkably consistent polling (with an exception, discussed below).
Here are the Real Clear Politics averages and most recent polls.
With no toss-ups, based on current polling Hillary easily wins the electoral college:
The glimmer of hope for Trump in the far distance is the IBD/TIPP poll, the only recent poll to show Trump leading. You could write that off as an anomaly, but, that poll was the most accurate in 2012.
So the hope for Trump is that the average polling is way, way, way off. That meme was pushed in 2012 to no effect.
Trump also needs to hope that something changes between now and November 8 that changes the nature of the race.
More Wikileaks disclosures proving that the Clinton machine has corrupted the media, DOJ, FBI and just about every other thing it touches will not be enough.
It will have to be something more than that. Because you can expect more October surprises to be dropped on Trump — probably one every few days.
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