It's a Dead-Heat at the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times 'Daybreak' Poll

I've written about this survey before. See, "Hillary Clinton Slumps in L.A. Times Daybreak Tracking Poll," and "Hillary Clinton 'Inching Up' in Los Angeles Times Presidential Election 'Daybreak' Poll."

Also, "The Presidential Horse Race at the L.A. Times 'Daybreak' Tracking Poll."

Remember, it's an online panel survey that rolls over sub-samples daily. About 3,000 respondents participate in the entire survey, and individual opinions change, not the sample participants themselves (and thus the poll's supposed to be less volatile than traditional random sampling). This one's got a lag of a couple of days before you see changes in the numbers generated by campaign controversies. Notice at the screen-cap how Hillary (in blue) fails to get a substantial bounce out of the Democrat Convention (compared to CNN's post-convention poll on August 1st.) And in the past week or so, Hillary's email controversies appear to be taking a toll.


But frankly, I have no clue on how reliable is the "Daybreak" poll, although it's interesting that RCP's average of recent horse-race polls is down to 6 percent from almost 8 percent a couple of weeks ago.

Also, we're not talking about polling in the battleground states. The horse-race is the horse-race: It's a snapshot of national opinion that provides survey fodder for TV talking heads, as well as feedback for the campaigns to make adjustments, etc. Lots of folks are saying "if the election were held today" Hillary would crush Trump in a landslide. But the election's not being held today, and frankly, I think the Clinton camp is extremely desperate in the aftermath of the latest devastating email bombshells. Hillary's speech today reeks so strongly of desperation, it's almost like she's lost her mind. (See, "Hillary Clinton's Desperate, Shameful Speech on Donald Trump and the 'Alt Right'.")

Still, I'm not going to be all like 2012, when everyone thought Romney was surging to the finish line, and polls like Gallup had the GOP ticket at 51 percent on the eve of the election. Even Robert Stacy McCain was all excited about a "silent majority" of voters in Ohio flocking to the polls to put Romney over the top. Nope. It didn't happen. Indeed, the networks called the race around dinner time on the West Coast. Totally anti-climactic. And a real bummer.

So, I'm just burning off some steam here. As always, we'll see what happens on November 8th.

More here, in any case, "Where the presidential race stands today."