The national polls and post mortem from R-SC and D-NV

 The Dems: It's a good time to remind folks reading this blog that the national polls are often meaningless in terms of trends. Hillary won Nevada by 5.5%, which means the "outlier" poll by Gravis Marketing was closest to correct. This either means I have misjudged Gravis or we have a  blind pig/acorn situation.

I'm going to go with the second one. I apologized to Gravis on my Twitter feed last night, but now I'm awake and relatively sober, and I still don't trust them.

The graph shows Hillary leading as she has forever, but the trend looks positive for Sanders. I don't think the trend can be trusted. Clinton's next test is South Carolina next weekend, where she is an overwhelming favorite according to a reasonable number of polls. Then comes Super Tuesday nine days from today. I fully expect Sanders to win some contests on Super Tuesday, but the delegate lead from victories by Clinton will become obvious. Barring a miracle, Sanders' chance to win will evaporate before the first day of Spring.

The GOP: The national trend shows Trump well in the lead but wobbling around in the 35-40% range. I think this is fairly accurate. He won South Carolina handily last night and the next race is the Nevada caucus. Not unlike the situation with the Democrats in Nevada, the number of polls is ridiculously low, but Trump has a comfortable lead.

There are now five people left, but all signs point to a three-person race with a lopsided advantage for Trump. After New Hampshire, Rubio the Robot was supposed to be a discontinued model, but now after South Carolina, he's the "establishment" candidate in the running. This has been a very strange year.

Speaking of strange years, we won't have Jeb:( to kick around anymore. I still can't believe he never caught the Completely Sane and Honest Ben Carson in the weekly national polling average even once, because Carson shows every sign of being a complete non-factor in every upcoming race. Then again, Jeb:( was also a non-factor.

In my evaluation of the Democrats, I've already prepared people for Hillary's inevitability, so am I ready to say the same about Trump? I should be, but honestly, the Republican race is a species I've never seen before, so I can't be sure which way things will jump. I'm getting the strong feeling that nothing that comes out of Trump's mouth can kill him with the Republican base right now, unless he turns 180 degrees from his most popular positions, like admitting there won't be a wall on the Mexican border and he has no way of getting Mexico to pay for it.

So what can kill Trump? Well, I'm not completely sure what happens as Kasich and Carson fade away. I don't think Cruz or Rubio have the talent at campaigning to beat the Teflon Donald, but once again, this is a new species of contest to me, which makes me much less confident to say I know which way the numbers are going.

Let me say this for the record. This isn't the Tea Party anymore. This is the Meth and Heroin Party. (Looking online, that combination is called either Methball or Screwball.) These are the white people who are seeing first hand the worsening situation for white folks in the areas of the country where the economy has gone to shit, who are living with the increasing death rates for middle aged whites noted in the paper by Deaton and Case. It's a mistake to think they are unable to see Trump is just making stuff up as he goes along, it's that they want to believe so bad, they make Mulder look like Scully. They also get a daily dose of news and opinion from talk radio and the Internet that is way more toxic than Fox News, people now considered unfit for TV like Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Alex Jones. Every time I hear Jones, I am amazed he has an audience and it is terrifying that people running for president would appear on his show. It's harder for me to explain than the popularity of some of the stranger TV and radio preachers like Dr. Gene Scott or Harold Camping.

In short, this is some fucked up shit and I'm trying to make sense of it. By my own standards, I am not succeeding yet.

So February winds down with two contests that appear to have exactly zero drama, and then it's Super Tuesday. This is going to be a crazy amount to data to collect and I'm not even sure of the best way to present it. Stay tuned to see what clever (or not so clever) method I use to make sense of the least sensible election I have ever seen.

Polls for today's contests: The Republicans in South Carolina, The Democrats in Nevada

The GOP: Polling companies have been working hard getting numbers for today's primary in South Carolina, the first big test after New Hampshire for the Republicans. There have been eighteen polls in the past ten days and while there have definitely been outliers, the general trend agrees on this rough picture.

1. Trump should win. If anyone gets within ten percentage points, it should be counted as a moral victory.

2. Rubio and Cruz are in a tough battle for second. The only way this race can be considered an upset is if one of them is ten percentage points higher than the other.

3. Kasich and Jeb:( are in the hunt for the fourth and fifth spots.

4. The Completely Sane and Honest Ben Carson should be a non-factor in sixth.

Here are the numbers Nate Silver tweeted last night.

Trump 31
Rubio 20
Cruz 20
Jeb:( 11
Kasich 9
Carson 8

Here's my best guess.

Trump 36
Rubio 19
Cruz 19
Jeb:( 10
Kasich 10
Carson 7

 Basically, I'm bullish on Trump in comparison to Silver's numbers and ever so slightly bearish on everybody else. If I have a slight advantage here, my numbers add up to 100 and his add up to 99.

The Dems: No chart for the Democratic caucus because there were a total of three polls this month, which is a pathetic number. Worse than that, one of the three polls is from Gravis Marketing, a company in which I have no faith whatsoever.

Here's what the three polls say: It's a dead heat, Hillary leads by a point, Hillary leads by six points. The last numbers are from Gravis.

My best guess is it will be close and it can't be considered a real upset in either direction unless the gap is more than five points. If it's Hillary by five or more, I will publicly apologize to Gravis Marketing and I will still continue to mistrust them.

Back with the post-mortem tomorrow.

South Carolina GOP polling

Usually, my posts have information from both primary races, but for the rest of February, we have the situation that the two parties will not be holding their contests on the same day in either South Carolina or Nevada. The GOP has their South Carolina primary next Saturday and the Democrats caucus in Nevada that same day. There has only been one poll this month in Nevada - a Republican poll that shows Sanders and Clinton tied - so I will wait until there are at least two polls that can be averaged.

There has been a lot more polling of the Republican race in South Carolina, and right now the news looks good for Trump. He doesn't look to be in a tough race until Super Tuesday, and in a five-way race, he's going to be tough to beat. Carson is technically the sixth guy in the race and he's still in fourth place in national polls, but in states that are soon to make up their minds, the voters show that they know he's on a book tour, not a presidential campaign. He won't quit until Armstrong Williams thinks there is no profit in the continued book tour, but he does not look like a factor anywhere.

As I said, Carson is still in fourth place in national polls, but Bush and Kasich have overtaken him in South Carolina, much the same way they were in the race for second in New Hampshire. The four also-rans are taking more shots at each other than they take at Trump, and with the Supreme Court now front and center, it would be a great time for other GOP candidates to take a few shots at Trump's favorite judge, his older sister Maryanne Trump Berry, who sits on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and has a strong pro-choice record in her decisions. This sounds like a perfect question for push polling, the kind of rat-fucking at which Karl Rove excels. The thing is, this story is 100% true, so it doesn't have to be a whisper campaign. The opposition research teams for his opponents really screwed the pooch in last night's debate.

Tomorrow: the national polls for both parties.