Fox National Poll: Clinton +3/+5

[NOVA Green]

Today has been insane with the variations in national polling....

This poll in particular, compared to what is now amounting to more like a Fox twice weekly tracking style poll, appears to indicate some of the Republicans that dumped Trump after Gropergate and the 3rd Debate are bouncing back slightly.

What's real and what's not real, idk anymore at this point, but as Clinton has been consolidating Millennials, Trump was losing some Republican leaning voters that may or may not be coming back over the past week, since he's been a relatively good boy and hasn't said anything too outrageous in almost a week now.

Still I'll take a 44/45 in a 4-way and 49/50 in a 2-way any day for Clinton now since her numbers look relatively stable and "baked-in" although obviously there is still room to grow slightly on the margins.

[NOVA Green]

urban: Clinton +22
suburban: Clinton +7
rural: Trump +17

Um, these numbers actually suggest a Clinton blowout.

How are they defining urban, suburban, and rural?  What %age of the country do they put in each basket?  If it was an even split between the three, then the average would be (+22 +7 -17) / 3 = +4, for a 4 point Clinton lead.

I doubt it. Romney carried suburbs by 2 and rural areas by 24 and still lost by 4.

But we have no idea if Fox defines urban/suburban/rural the same way that the exit poll service does.  As cinyc noted, for all we know this is just self-reported.

I thought this was discussed at the time of the last Fox News national poll...

Regardless, even if Trump is up 17% among "Rural" voters, however that is defined while losing by large margins with urban/suburban voters, it would be hard to find a silver lining even if one were a Trump supporter.

But yeah, we can't easily extrapolate date from this one particular poll and compare/contrast based upon 2012 exit polls, but regardless of how one chooses to slice and dice, these numbers don't look at all good for Trump unless there are a ton of urban/suburban voters based upon area codes/ zip codes/ self-ID or what have you that fall into a "rural" category considering that over 80% of Americans live in urban/suburban areas by any measure whatsoever.

[NOVA Green]

But yeah, we can't easily extrapolate date from this one particular poll and compare/contrast based upon 2012 exit polls, but regardless of how one chooses to slice and dice, these numbers don't look at all good for Trump unless there are a ton of urban/suburban voters based upon area codes/ zip codes/ self-ID or what have you that fall into a "rural" category considering that over 80% of Americans live in urban/suburban areas by any measure whatsoever.

But why does it matter?  What really matters is the topline number, much moreso than how he's doing with this or that demo.  Unless you can really use the crosstabs to cast doubt on the topline number, but I don't see how you can do that with urban/suburban/rural when we don't know how they're defined in this poll.  If you want to cast doubt on the topline number, then use one of the other crosstabs, where the definition is more clear.

[/quote]

I thought this was discussed at the time of the last Fox News national poll...

Regardless, even if Trump is up 17% among "Rural" voters, however that is defined while losing by large margins with urban/suburban voters, it would be hard to find a silver lining even if one were a Trump supporter.

But yeah, we can't easily extrapolate date from this one particular poll and compare/contrast based upon 2012 exit polls, but regardless of how one chooses to slice and dice, these numbers don't look at all good for Trump unless there are a ton of urban/suburban voters based upon area codes/ zip codes/ self-ID or what have you that fall into a "rural" category considering that over 80% of Americans live in urban/suburban areas by any measure whatsoever.

Well, we know from the subsample MoEs in this poll that Suburban>Rural>Urban.  So there are more rural residents (however defined) than urban residents.  Whether that's because self-reporting residents of, say, Staten Island or the less dense areas of northern San Antonio, claiming they live in a suburban rather than urban area despite technically living in a city, or exurban residents claiming they live in a rural area, or the Fox pollsters have some other criteria like density or whether someone lives in an urban cluster we don't know.  But we do know that there are fewer urbans in this poll than any other type.

I absolutely agree with both of these statements (Bolded).

Self-definitions of urban/suburban/rural are much less indicative of what is actually happening than standard more clearly defined categories of gender/ethnicity/income/education without even getting into items such as religious attendance/ married status/ gun ownership, etc....

Topline numbers once again indicate that Clinton is cracking 50% in a two-way and 44%+ in a four-way with Trump still struggling to even hit 42%.

This is not a bad poll for Clinton, although it might indicate a slight swing towards Trump from some Republicans that dumped him a week or two back, and essentially this is statistical noise in just one poll, and doesn't in any way shape or form indicate that there is a new wave of "TrumpMo" going down, considering that although it is slightly on the low end for Clinton's topline doesn't appear to indicate a Trump surge among undecided voters.