Talk of Clinton winning Texas has GOP craving reality check

Documents filed in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and OH accuse Trump, the GOP, Stone and his Stop the Steal super PAC of “conspiring to threaten, intimidate, and thereby prevent minority voters in urban neighborhoods from voting in the 2016 election“. That’s certainly the case in Tampa Bay and South Florida during the early voting period.

Amid the attacks and counterattacks, the race for the White House remains at its core a test of a simple question: Will the conventional rules of modern-day campaigns apply to a 2016 election that has been anything but conventional?

“The vote will be about Hillary Clinton, not her husband”, said Ryan Otteson, 33, of Salt Lake City, who’s voting for a third-party candidate, conservative independent Evan McMullin.

The lawsuit, which loops in the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, is similar to lawsuits filed Sunday by the state Democratic parties in Arizona, Ohio and Nevada against Trump, Stone and the state Republican parties there.

The more votes are cast before November 8, the more work Clinton and Donald Trump will have wrapped up by Election Day. Democrats now lead in ballots submitted, 46 per cent to 29 per cent.

Numerous studies have shown that voter fraud in US elections is very rare, and a number of prominent Republicans have denounced Trump’s claim that the system is unsound. Raised in Queens, New York, in the late “50s and early ’60s, she defied her parents” urges to marry after high school, and instead, attended a four-year college.

Clinton’s efforts are about turnout.

That could mean some 40 million to 50 million people (or more) could vote early. Clinton continues to lead among women, 46-36 percent.

Clinton aides cite early voting statistics as proof that while the Federal Bureau of Investigation news has drawn heavy scrutiny in recent days, it has not moved the core of her support.

Registered Democrats still have an advantage over Republicans, to the tune of about 40,000 votes, or 12.6 percentage points out of almost 340,000 ballots cast. John McCain with a 10-point lead in the race over Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick. They’ll need to close that gap if they want to hold onto the state that Barack Obama carried twice. At the end of August, Democrats had 4,200 staffers compared with fewer than 900 for Republicans, according to calculations made by NBC.

Overall ballots in Nevada are down but the Democratic lead widened after the start of in-person voting last week. They now lead Republicans by nearly 23,000 votes, or 11.3 percentage points – which is slightly ahead of their 2012 edge of 10 points at this stage.

In Nevada, Trump’s hardline position on immigration has turned off many in the state’s large Hispanic population – giving Clinton an advantage.

For the election home stretch, the 69-year-old Clinton has at her disposal a party war chest nearly four times that of her rival: $62 million against $16 million. Obama won the election by 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206. But that gender gap has dropped from 20 points.

The Clinton campaign describes both North Carolina and Florida as “checkmate” states. At this point in 2012, black voters were 30 percent of the electorate.

Still, 44 percent say they’re less likely to vote for her because of hacked information about what she said during private speeches for which she has long refused to release transcripts. Meanwhile, the share of white voters has climbed from 64 percent at this point in 2012 to 72 percent now.

And speaking just nine days before Election Day, the Republican nominee also bemoaned criticism of waterboarding and appeared to once again call for bringing back the since-banned technique for use in the fight against ISIS. Of that total, 52 work for Clinton, 42 work for the Lee County Democratic Party and 35 work for Trump.