With Election Day being six days away and early voting already starting, in Georgia at least, we must shift our focus strongly to polls in each state. As Dr. Adams talked about in class, we need to closely watch what happens to Florida during the campaign, so that’s what we’ll discuss.
Though Trump is still behind in the count, he has taken the lead in some key battleground states — including Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina — and is edging out Clinton in the traditional swing states of Ohio and Florida. Trump is making great strides to win in these prominent states this election. Aside from his previous catastrophes, he has not said anything that was disastrous enough to “trump” the further investigation of Hillary’s email scandals. In fact, this investigation of her emails have allowed him to reclaim a competitive part in this election where his campaign may have thought that it was over after the alleged victims of his sexual misconduct came forward.
The poll shows 86 percent of Republicans are now planning on supporting Trump, up from 82 percent earlier this week. More significantly, Trump has also gone from a 6 point deficit to a 16 point advantage with independent voters. These polls are important because Trumps’ previous statements about the polls being rigged and that he doesn’t believe they’re portraying him in an accurate manner, yet now the gap between him and Clinton is closing. In class, Dr. Panetta continuously asks us things about the voters having made up their minds about the race and who they’re voting for. Until this point, I have thought that everyone made their decision, but this coming back of Trump is really distorting what I thought was going to happen this far into the election season. He has done a great job by letting his story die down and focusing on the campaign while letting Clinton take the scrutiny for her misdoings.
Florida is a main state, and without it, he has no plausible path to the presidency without Florida’s 29 electoral votes. On October 30, Trump was ahead in Florida, which is a win for him, but I still think that this far into the race with numbers being so close, that he’s playing too safe and needs to ensure the people something to solidify a win for himself. On November 8, we will definitely see if the South is really red, blue, or a new “purple stew.”