When Larry Sabato sketched out the state of play for 2016 in May of last year, there were seven swing states identified: Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire and Virginia. North Carolina leaned Republican and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania leaned Democratic. Otherwise, the state of play was set. Missouri, once a swing state, had proven that it was Republican to stay.
At the moment, here is where those seven swing states stand in the RealClearPolitics polling average of polls:
- Colorado: Hillary Clinton +10.8
- Nevada: Clinton +2.3
- Iowa: Clinton +1.5
- Ohio: Clinton +4.8
- Florida: Clinton +4.5
- New Hampshire: Clinton +9.3
- Virginia: Clinton +12.8
Clinton +12.8. That's aided by a new poll from Roanoke College putting Clinton up by 19 points (19!) over Donald Trump. But other recent Virginia polling has shown a wide gap, if not one that wide. North Carolina, the state that leaned Republican, favors Clinton by 1.8 points. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the margins are 7 and 9.4 points, respectively.
Meanwhile, a new poll from Monmouth University (a pollster Trump called "respected" last April, back when he was tweeting about polls) has Trump up only one point over Clinton in Missouri, making the state effectively a tie. Making the state, at least for now, an actual swing state.
It's only been about a week since Trump shook up his campaign staff in an effort to turn things around, and therefore it's a little early to start suggesting that the shake-up did or didn't work. But it's worth keeping an eye on. Since the end of the conventions, here's how polling has looked nationally and in swing states that have had new surveys come out over the past week.
(FiveThirtyEight took a look at why national polling looks like it's tightening even though swing state polls don't.)
That new Missouri poll from Monmouth might look like an outlier from the trend, but it's actually close to a poll released at the end of July showing Clinton with a 1-point lead in the state.
Comparing the demographic differences in the new Virginia and Missouri reveals a lot about why the race looks the way that it does.
Notice that Trump is even with Clinton in Missouri, a state where Republican support for his candidacy is about the same as Democratic support for Clinton's (the second set of bars). In Virginia, Clinton gets far more Democratic support than Trump does Republican, which contributes to the wide split in the polls there. There's a wide split among women in Virginia that doesn't exist in Missouri, which may be a function of the former poll having twice as big a sample of black voters. As we've noted, it's educated Republican women who are Trump's biggest problem.
One thing suggested by these two new polls is that if Trump can improve his standing among Republicans, he can make gains across the board. He basically has to, and the gains he needs to make are big. But if he can shore up his base, the race will tighten.
The problem continues to be that the sand keeps slipping through the hourglass. Fifteen months ago, Missouri wasn't supposed to be a near-tie and Virginia was. The map as of today — a week after the second big shift within Trump's campaign during the general election — is a map that will elect Hillary Clinton.