On Polling: What Should We Be Looking For?

Now that we're past both nominating conventions and that we're going to be getting away from the post-con bounces both Presidential nominees get, what should we be looking for among the polls - check here, check here, and follow up with Sober Nate Silver there - during the months of August and September?

1) Keep an eye on women. Where most polling focused during previous election cycles on ethnic blocs - White, Black, Hispanic, Asian and Other - the real split this 2016 is happening with the Men-Women vote.

As noted earlier, Silver and his fellow stat checkers at 538.com documented the severe hatred women have towards Trump. This is a key demographic as A) more women historically show up to vote than men and B) we're talking about ALL women including White voters who would normally be voting Republican.

White voters in 2012 voted around 60 percent for Romney (R), which had to include a high number of women among men. This HuffPo poll from 2012 results showed Romney won White Women voters 56 percent. Even with that number - considering Whites vote in greater overall numbers than all other ethnic groups combined - Romney still LOST. Trump in 2016 has to perform higher than that... but if White Women break away from White Men, Trump can't do that.

According to this 2016 Pew Research poll, Trump is only polling 35 percent to Clinton's 53 percent with Women overall. Among White Women Trump is getting 42 percent. Note the difference between 56 percent White Women in 2012 for Mitt to 42 percent White Women currently for Trump. That's a minus-14 point drop. Trump is not getting 60 percent of overall White voters this year, he just isn't...

2) Remember that the non-White voting blocs are so currently opposed to the Republican Party and so opposed to Trump that those groups are not going to flip to the GOP in significant numbers to help Republicans.

Black voters are likely to stay near 95-98 percent in favor of the Democrats. Hispanic voters are likely to be above 80 percent in favor of Dems by Election Day. Asian voters are reportedly getting close to being close to 80 percent for Dems as well.

While the total number of each voting bloc can't equal White Voters overall, the advantage to the Democrats having minority voters entirely with their party is that it reduces the odds of Blue and battleground states from flipping to Red/Republican. Consider them a firewall.

These are no longer elections fought by issues or ideology. We are now in elections fought over demographics (which explains why Republicans are so desperate to suppress voting rights for minorities).

3) Hispanic voters are the wild card this election cycle.

It's because polling for Hispanic voters is harder to do than for the other voting blocs, over communication - few polling units use Spanish-language surveys - and overall unwillingness to answer those surveys. So there's little idea how the turnout of that group - which is close to surpassing registration numbers for Black voters - is actually going to happen.

There's solid evidence Hispanic voters are registering in larger numbers than before, and they've got a good incentive to vote this time as Trump's illegal immigration policies are a direct threat to themselves (even as legal citizens, Hispanic-Americans know exactly what can happen in a mass round-up of anyone even looking remotely Latino). The problem - as always - remains turnout. If overall turnout of Hispanic voters gets above 50 percent - and remains around 80 percent Democrat - that will be good news for Hillary's camp.

Is there anything else we should be looking for?

Oh, right.

GET THE VOTE OUT, PEOPLE. Polling may be one thing but what MATTERS is the actual DAMN TURNOUT!