No, not really.

Per my post on Friday, I tend to look at elections from a more fundamental point of view. Is the economy healthy, is the nation at peace?  If the fundamentals are strong, the electorate will tend to stay the course and return the incumbent party to office as in 1972, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2012.  If there are problems, such as in 1980, 1992, or 2008, they vote for change.  Campaign tactics and candidate likability matter in close elections, but tend not to overcome fundamentals.  The fundamentals favor Clinton.

Comeygate is not really a new story.  It’s just more about emails.  The media are much more worked up about emails than the average voter.  There is no reason to think that these emails contain a smoking gun indicating that Hilary compromised national security.  In fact, they may not even be new emails. Secretary Clinton was presumably the sender or receiver of these emails from a computer used by her aide Huma Abedin, and the FBI would already have them from their earlier investigation of the Clinton’s server.

That said, the timing is terrible for HRC.  It takes attention off of Trump and puts it back on Clinton.  Before Comeygate, there was a real possibility of a Trump collapse and a Clinton win in the 8 to 10 percentage point margin.  When it becomes obvious that one candidate is going to lose, their supporters lend to lose enthusiasm and may not turn out.  Comeygate re-engergizes Trump’s base and makes it more likely they will turn out.  I’ve always expected the election result to be between the two Obama margins.  Now I think we are much more likely to be at the low end of that range, a 4 percent win.

I don’t obsess over tracking polls. They tend to measure enthusiasm at the margin.  When a candidate is having a bad news day, less of their voters answer the pollster’s call.  I don’t really believe in wild polling swings after the convention bounces have settled out.  Although I am a fan of Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight, I also appreciate the work of Professor Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium.  Wang uses a model based only on state polls, which he then averages into a “meta margin.”  Since May, that margin has been averaged around 3.5 percent in Clinton’s favor. Sometimes it move higher when news is good for Clinton (post convention) or  lower when she is having bad news. Right now the meta margin is at about 3.2 percent, suggesting an electoral college win of 317 to 221 according to Professor Wang.

Bottom line, I expect Clinton to win by about 4 percent, unless Comey is discredited and/or there is more negative news on Trump.  Both of these are real possibilities. The media understands that Trump is a much greater danger to the security of the union.  The public understands the strengths and weaknesses of both candidates and will make a rational decision.

Kevin Drum has a nice piece on Sam Wang’s work and a related discussion by the folks at the YouGov poll, which tries to deal with response rate changes by using weights based on the 2012 election.  Here’s a link:

http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/here-are-my-nominees-phrase-year

Kevin’s final paragraph mirrors my own thinking:

Clinton could easily lose another point before Election Day, or she could revert back to 3.5 and stay there. I’d bet on reversion to the mean. This election features two candidates who have been around a long time and are both very well known. Almost everybody made up their minds pretty early, and nothing much has changed for the past 12 months. Hillary Clinton will most likely win by 3-4 percentage points, plus maybe a little extra because she has a way better ground game.