https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman

Look - I get your point. Let's not count the chickens before they hatch and whatnot. But the fact of the matter is, one national paper in one edition relied on a political analyst rather than actual election returns because they decided to roll the dice rather than wait for results. More than that, it was the Dixiecrat election where Strom Thurmond basically fucked shit up for the Republicans despite the fact that everyone thought he'd fuck shit up for the Democrats.

I've been thinking of making a post about this but I'll just put it in this comment instead: Donald Trump is what you get when an internet troll runs for president. Not enough people saw bfv's post:

It makes the argument that Donald Trump is effectively like a Markov bot fed bad data. On the one hand, it's a little simplistic to characterize a living, thinking human being as a bad algorithm. On the other hand, /r/Subredditsimulator is far and away the most interesting and engaging subreddit left, so it's not completely out of left field.

Here's the thing:

1) Trolls do not distinguish between good attention and bad attention. After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity, right? Except that modern elections have effectively become integrity competitions, where "you used your own email server" is grounds for assassination-talk. This dynamic works when you're attempting to win an online (or Twitter) argument, but when you stand in front of another human being and say "do you really think that having state secrets on private hardware is as bad as wanting to nuke Syria?" those who are not already firmly in the troll camp generally mutter, grumble and go in the human direction.

2) Trolls feed on "vanity statistics" - upvotes, retweets, Google mentions - without focusing on core metrics (voter conversion, etc). Donald Trump's primary vehicle for communication is the one where Ashton Kutcher famously carries more influence than Oprah Winfrey. Whenever challenged, Trump refers to the number of people at his rallies as if they somehow carry more weight than the overwhelmingly negative coverage he's receiving.

3) Trolls rise to prominence rapidly through their own ranks, but are quickly marginalized in the greater community. There will always be a contingent egging the troll on, but the very behavior that encourages the converted limits further conversion. Take it away, NYT:

“There is absolutely no way Trump wins Pennsylvania unless he can broaden his appeal significantly and overcome his huge deficit in the suburbs,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin & Marshall College poll and a longtime analyst of Pennsylvania politics. “He does well with white working-class voters, but there simply aren’t enough of them in Pennsylvania to win. And he can’t stick with his political message for more than five minutes.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers expressed confidence in their strategy and questioned whether public polls fully reflect his support. While some did express concern that there could be a ceiling on his support among women and members of minority groups, they also said he had room to grow among first-time voters, white men and independents — who, they said, will not pay attention to the race until the presidential debates begin in late September.

4) Trolls exist by scoring points against the opponent. Politicians exist by scoring points for themselves. Yes, negative campaigning is highly effective and yes, most of the major turning points in past elections have been negative - Kerry and the surfboard, Dukakis and the tank, Willie Horton, etc - but they have all been used to highlight and accentuate the characteristics of the target's opponent. Kerry out surfing drew attention to "commander in chief" Bush. Dukakis was made to look silly next to the vice president who flew fighter planes during WWII. Daisy was used to illustrate that LBJ had been in the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis while Goldwater most assuredly had not. The Trump campaign has nowhere to go with this- there is no credible way that they can argue Hillary Clinton isn't presidential but Donald Trump is. They can snipe at Clinton all they want - but the argument isn't "Clinton or nothing" it's "Clinton or Trump."

Trump's actions are entirely negative. He is an oppositional candidate. But at the end of the day, people vote for a president, not against a president, even if that's what they think they're doing. And while there are plenty of people out there who are all about an anybody-but-Hillary presidency, there are more that want to do more than watch the world burn.

And the poll numbers reflect this.