Two BIG problems with Hillary way in the lead

[davidn3600]

1. It gives people reason to be complacent. When you are told your candidate is inevitably going to win. There is a chance it may lower turnout. And I think that is a real threat. Because right now, many commentators and news media are saying "it's over" and "it's done" and "the math is impossible." This isn't going to discourage a single Trump voter because they already hate the media and already think they are against the world. They DO have higher enthusiasm numbers.

2. You get a "Brexit."
When Britain held their Brexit vote in June, polls all agreed that the UK would vote to stay in the EU. However, Brexit won. So what happened? Were the polls wrong? Not necessarily. Later analysis showed many people believed the polls that the vote would fail. Therefore some people voted to leave so that it would be a "protest vote." But they didn't want it to actually pass! The pollsters DO NOT take into account this kind of voter psychology.

So what do you think happens if some Democratic voters say...."Trump is going to lose, so that means I can safely vote for Jill Stein now!"

I also don't know how much stock I put in some of these polls. I was looking at the RCP graph showing Trump vs Clinton for the past year. You know what I see a ton of? Inconsistency. The graph is like a roller coaster with lots of peaks and valleys for both candidates. It also seems to go in cycles. Which mean if the cycle continues, polls will be narrowing by the time election day rolls around. I also think something is wrong with them because of these swings back and forth. Is there really that many people out there flipping their votes back and forth? Are that many people truly that uncommitted that they flip every time a tape is released or a WikiLeak email is released?

Remember what Yogi Berra said, "it ain't over till it's over." In the sports world, if you get a big lead and try to sit on it and play conservatively, you tend to get bit. We still have 3 1/2 weeks to go.

[MFM008]

1. Very few of us here

Are going to be complacent.
We can only do what we can do.

[manicraven]

2. I think Trump's daily nonsense, including his fascist speeches, are helping to keep us motivated.

Also, we realize what is at stake, including the environment, the Supreme Court, our sanity! I for one need Trump to go away very badly.

[qdouble]

3. As Nate Silver pointed out, aggregate polls of Brexit had it as being a toss-up

Most of the time when people claim the polls were wrong, they look at outlier polls instead of polling averages.

[Helen Borg]

4. We are where we were in mid August.

And yet, even with a chance of a Trump win of 14%, I feel uncomfortable. If somebody handed you a gun saying there are 7 bullet slots and only one has a bullet, would you feel comfortable pulling the trigger with the gun against your head? That is what a 14% win means in terms of probabilities. That number has to go down to < 1%. Clinton should be smoking Trump in some states where the race is close.

[stonecutter357]

5. I'm not concerned at all.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. There's this strange myth that "polls all agreed that the UK would vote to stay in the EU"

It's simply false. There were plenty of polls saying Leave was ahead, right up until the actual vote - see here: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/eu-referendum

A lot of punditry (both amateur and 'professional') was saying "oh, people will come to their senses, don't believe the polls, they're bound to vote Remain" - I'm somewhat guilty of that myself. Polls in the 2015 general election did badly, but for the EU referendum, they did pretty well, especially given that there wasn't a previous result with polls before it to compare with.