On Fox News last night, host Bill O’Reilly told Donald Trump, “You’re behind with women,” though the Republican candidate was incredulous, replying, “I’m not sure I believe that.” O’Reilly reminded his guest, “Whether you believe it or not, that’s what the polling says.”It was a funny moment, but the Republican campaign’s discomfort with the latest polling isn’t limited to the candidate. On CNN last night, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, talked to Anderson Cooper about the latest data.
CONWAY: My goodness, why is this woman at 46 percent? She’s like the magic 46. She’s 46 percent in the new NBC News Wall Street Journal poll, she’s 46 percent in a lot of the swing states –COOPER: She’s ahead of your candidate, though…. [Y]ou’re saying 46 percent is bad, but 37 percent is worse.
As a quantifiable matter, that seems hard to deny. In fact, it’s a little odd for a presidential ticket’s campaign manager to effectively tell a national television audience, “The other candidate who’s beating us should probably be ahead by a larger margin.”Then again, I’m not sure what more Trump and his aides should say that would be more persuasive. The latest polls point to a Republican campaign with very little to brag about.Just over the last 24 hours, new results show Clinton leading in Ohio, tied in Utah, ahead in Maine, and leading in Virginia.The news is slightly better for Trump in Alaska, where he’s now up by five, but given that Mitt Romney won Alaska by 14 points in 2012, and John McCain won the state by nearly 22 points in 2008, the latest results from the Last Frontier probably shouldn’t be interpreted as good news.National polling from NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist, meanwhile, shows Clinton pulling away from Trump in the wake of his latest controversies, putting him in a hole no presidential candidate has ever climbed out of in an election’s final four weeks.As of this afternoon., the New York Times‘ Upshot predictive model, meanwhile, shows Clinton with an 88% chance of winning the presidential election, up from 70% in late September. FiveThirtyEight has a few different forecast models, but they’re all roughly in line with the Times‘ projection.To borrow a line, “Whether you believe it or not, that’s what the polling says.”
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."