Just Who is Voting for Who?

What is the Make Up of Trump and Clinton Support

In the The Good, the Bad, and the Delusional and How to get Voters, the Gadfly Way, I went on to describe the mindset of voters and in general how candidates form their coalition. Now there's a lot of background here, so if you haven't already read those links, you need to buck up. If you try to wing it, you'll end up sniffling like Trump in a debate.

Time to Look at the Polls

It's not like you can go and ask "Are you delusional and voting for Clinton". The art is to look for significant events in the poll and see if you can infer mindsets from this.

Here's my amateur take. So, once again, our old friend, charts from Real Clear Politics,

Let's look at the two "Natural Points", the first and last lines in the chart. The first line is when head-to-head polls settled during the primaries. You can think of this as their first impressions. This was about 45 Clinton to 44 Trump. The last line is where polls settled after Labor Day. The common wisdom is that most voters don't pay attention until after this. (I don't buy that but let's go with it.) You will notice that is also 45 Clinton to 44 Trump.

So, these two points can be thought of as to where the electorate goes if allowed to settle over time. Part of the idea, is that we really don't change our first impressions, and all the play between these two point is just rationalization of what we feel.

That aside, we can use this to infer their natural coalitions. In other words, if voters are not being swayed by events, campaigning, gaffs, etc, Clinton gets 45 and Trump get 44. (If this panics you, wait. There's more to go).

Before we go further. There is a flaw with this chart. Note the green lines in the graph above. They mark the End of the Primaries and Labor Day, both times when who's following the election and methods of polling significantly change. I have some defense of this because the Natural points match. Fortunately only one data point, Clinton's High of 50, happened before the End of the Primaries. So, we'll just save that for now and bring it in later.

We really can't do post Labor Day because the time is too short. So, let's look from the End of the Primaries. (You will see another reason for doing this later)

So here's the breakdown

Trump
                   Trump   Clinton Undecided
Low      Jun 17th  38.3%    44.1%    17.6%
Natural  Sep 17th  43.9%    44.9%    11.2% 
High     Jul 27th  45.7%    44.6%     9.7%

Clinton
                  Clinton   Trump  Undecided
Low      Jul 15th  43.1%    40.4%    17.6%
Natural  Sep 17th  44.9%    43.9%    16.5% 
High     Aug 27th  48.4%    42.1%     9.5%
High (P) Mar 23rd  50.0%    38.8%    11.2%

However, these polls do not include Third Party. For our purposes, whether Libertarian or Green Party does not matter. Instead, this is a place holder for those opting out of voting. By the way, these polls don't start until after the End of the Primaries. (See what I did there).

Trump
                           Trump   Clinton Undecided  3rd
Low     4-way Jun 17th     35.3%    40.0%   16.1%     8.6%
        2-way              38.3%    44.1%   17.6%
Natural 4-way Sep 17th     40.3%    41.3%    7.2%    11.3%
        2-way              43.9%    44.9%   11.2% 

High    4-way Jul 27th     40.2%    40.4%    9.2%    10.2%
        2-way              45.7%    44.6%    9.7%

Clinton
                          Clinton  Trump  Undecided   3rd
Low     4-way Jul 30th     38.8%   40.0%    10.9%    10.3%
        2-way              43.7%   43.3%    13.0%
Low     4-way Jul 15th     40.3%   36.3%    12.9%    10.5%
        2-way              43.1%   40.4%    16.5%
Natural 4-way Sep 17th     41.3%   40.3%     7.2%    11.3%
        2-way              44.9%   43.9%    11.2% 

High    4-way Aug 8-12th   44.0%   37.0%     7.0%    12.0%
        2-way              48.0%   41.0%    11.0%

High    4-way Aug 27th     42.0%   38.0%     9.5%    11.4%

        2-way              48.4%   42.1%     9.5%
High (P)      Mar 23rd     50.0%   38.8%    11.2%

So What was Going On

To make sense of the numbers. Let's look at what's going on at those times. Remember that these polls represent what happened about a week to a month before.

March 23rd, Clinton's Highest point ever 50%
Around this time was the Brussels attack. Clinton held herself well, while Trump declared he needed no advise because of "his very good brain" and began a twitter war about Tedd Cruz's wife. (You can't make this up).

June 17th, Trump's Low point 35% 2-way and 38% 4-way
This was about the time Trump said Judge Curiel was biased against him because he was Mexican. Remember that Republican Partisans were counting on him to conform at this time. This is one of those rare times a candidate can drive even Partisans away.

July 15th, Clinton's Low 2-way point , 43% 2-way and 40% 4-way
FBI had released  results of the email server investigation which easily explains a low point,

July 27th, Trump's High 2-way point , 46% 2-way and 40% 4-way
This was at the time of the RNC a common High Point for any candidate. The messaging however offered very little for Republican Pragmatists and Idealists. This can explain the low 4-way number which is strange considering this is a high point.

July 30th, Clinton's Low point 4-way, 44% 2-way, 39% 4-way
The RNC had just happened providing a week of anti-Clinton campaigning, and the DNC Wikileak scandal had broken. This is also before Sanders had conceded. Idealists are the most like to be troubled by this.

August 8th thru 12th Clinton's High 4-way point, 48% 2-way, 44% 4-way
This was just after the DNC and was also around when Trump started his feud with the Khan family. Then a guy called the Gadfly Scholar started a blog, so obviously that change the entire race.

August 27th Clinton's High 2-way point, 48.4% 2-way, 42% 4-way
Very mixed time. Multiple stories about the Clinton Foundation, but this also is the time Manifort resigned, and Trump had to retool his campaign. Later he began hs outreach to African Americans, and Clinton responded speaking against the Alt-Right.

What Does All Means

Guessing their 'base' (Delusionals + Partisans) is straight forward. These are the voters that stay no matter what, so we just look at the candidate's worst days. Trump's is 35% and Clinton's if 39%.to 40%. We then look at those events to see if we can infer more.

Trumps Base

On June 17th, Trump had just become the presumptive nominee, and his, then, campaign manager Manifort had swayed nervous Republicans to believe Trump would be become more disciplined and conform. No one expected him to turn into a staunch Republican, but they did think he was smart and politically adept enough to work with them. Trump's attack on Judge Curiel torpedoed that idea.This indicates to me that Trump's base are mostly Delusionals.

From this event we can say that most Republican Partisans and Idealists were changed to Republican Pragmatists. So let's call his base, of mostly Delusionals, "Trumpys" and voters leaning to him "Hopeys" (as in they hope Trump stops being Trump).

Clinton's Base

July 15th was the most damaging time of her email scandal. Except for criminality, FBI Director Comey validated the worst suspicions of the scandal. However, if you look at the 2-way number, 43, she did not go down that much compared to her Natural point, 45. The bigger drop was her 4-way number indicating that her "natural" voters went to Third Party.

This analysis is supported by her Low point on July 30th, though the time is muddled. She should of had a good week with the DNC coming up. However, this was close enough to Comey's speech for the bad feelings to linger. The RNC, also, had a week to push this scandal  and any other criticisms of her. More importantly this was the time of the DNC leak, which certainly would anger Idealists still adjusting to the Sander's loss.

Let's call her 'base' "Borings" and voters leaning towards her "Excitables".

Trump's High Point

July 27 was the RNC, and that it was his High point is almost cliche. However, the number is only slightly higher than his Natural point, 46 vs 44, and his 4-way number remained low with no changed in Undecideds. In other words, all he did was rally his Trumpys and Hopeys and added some Pragmatists.

When, Clinton reached her Highest point of 48%, we can look at that as 52% would not vote for her under any circumstances. That would represent his Hopeys. However, we have to remove the base of Third Party voters, which I eye-balled as 8%. That gives us 9% Hopeys.

Another way to look at this is to ask: on his worst day,  how many votes went to Clinton. Looking at her 4-way number on that day, it's was typical, 40%. In other word, from his Natural Point, 44%, no votes went to Clinton. The  Natural point minus the Third Party base, 8%, confirms my previous guess of 9% Hopeys.

But that was her post primary High Point. If instead we use her most high, 50%, then we end up with 7% Hopeys.

Clinton's High Points

Her first High point, the 2nd week of August, was the DNC. Her later High point was more of a muddled time when Clinton campaigned against Trump's new efforts to "pivot". The difference between the two is mostly in the 4-way numbers. Both times drew Pragmatist, but the DNC rallied more Excitables.

Just as we did with Trump, we can use his high to estimate her Excitables giving us 7%. This is also close to what we get taking her Natural point and subtracting the Third Party base. 6%.

So Here are the Numbers

Here is my guess of their coalitions. Following my irrelevant labeling we'll call the True Pragmatists "Wait-n-Sees" and Third Party voters "No-Way-No-Hows"

Trump

35% Trumpys (Delusionals)

7% to 9% Hopeys (Partisans + Partisan-Pragmatists + Idealists)

Clinton

39% Borings (Delusionals + Partisans + Partisan-Pragmatists)

6% to 7% Excitables (Idealists)

Other

8% No-Way-No-Hows (Third Party)

2% to 5% Wait-n-Sees (True Pragmatists)

Now these number are going to be in flux and amount to my eye-ball, conjectured guess, so we can't treat these numbers as "real", Instead, these just give us the relative strength of their mindests. You've been warned.