Leads for Hillary Clinton in Virginia are becoming numbing irrespective of the source. That is the news. Up 16? Hard to believe, but so were the 10-point leads I started to see just after the Democratic Convention.
At this point, the difference between a 16-point lead and a 10-point lead are practically meaningless except in adding another 9 to the percentage of likeliness of a Hillary Clinton win of Virginia. The door is slammed shut and locked.
I am not doing much averaging this time. A three-week-old poll is obsolete when one of the nominees is as erratic and uncoachable as Donald Trump. Sure, his supporters are wildly enthusiastic, but that happens when a candidate has practically no moderate support (as with Goldwater in 1964 or McGovern in 1972).
Topline is probably an outlier, but he's going nowhere in this state with those numbers in Northern Virginia and Richmond.
Hopefully he stops holding rallies here.
But there are parts of Virginia in which he has popular support -- poor, under-educated, southwestern Virginia... Appalachia. Its demographics are much like West Virginia, a state that has trended very fast from being reliably Democratic in its Presidential voting to being reliably Republican. Liberals just do not get the culture of the Mountain South.... and it shows. I have yet to figure what the Republicans have to offer in Appalachia and the Ozarks.
