Doubting a Down-Ballot Wave

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on August 9, 2016 The latest ABC News/Wash­ing­ton Post poll puts Hil­lary Clin­ton ahead of Don­ald Trump by 8 points in the three-way tri­al heat, while both the Fox News and NBC News/Wall Street Journ­al polls have the former sec­ret­ary of State ahead by 9 points. CNN pegs her lead at 8 points, and CBS at 5 points. So there isn’t much ques­tion who is ahead, only how real and dur­able that lead is, how much of it is bounce or froth—and how strongly the ef­fects will be felt down-bal­lot. It’s clear that Demo­crats had the more suc­cess­ful con­ven­tion and that Clin­ton has had a strong run and Trump a very bad run since, but it’s un­real­ist­ic to think that she is go­ing to sail through the Nov. 8 elec­tion only hav­ing weeks as good as the last few have been. It would be very hard and pretty un­likely for Clin­ton to sus­tain a lead of this kind the rest of the way. At the same time, it is hard to look closely