The 5-Minute Fix from The Washington Post

Keeping up with politics is easy now

By Amber Phillips

Yes, he is -- if the race were held today, that is, almost two months after Donald Trump effectively clinched the nomination.

Look no further at the sharp drop of that red line below between May and June. According to new Washington Post-ABC News polling, the 2016 general election race was virtually tied in May -- and now Hillary Clinton leads Trump by 12 percentage points. That's her largest lead of the race yet.

TrumpPoll

Dig into the numbers further and you find that "Trump’s political standing is on dangerous ground," write The Post's Scott Clement and Philip Rucker. Roughly two in three Americans say they think Trump is unqualified to lead the nation and are anxious about him becoming president.

So what happened to Trump that caused his standing in the race to drop so precipitously in one month? Trump is what happened. Consider that between the last time we polled voters and now, he...

a) effectively clinched the nomination
b) tweeted a widely panned picture of himself eating a taco bowl on Cinco de Mayo with the words "I love Hispanics!"
c) kept up his criticism of an Indiana judge overseeing a Trump University lawsuit for his "Mexican heritage," comments even Trump's colleagues in the Republican Party called "racist"
d) appeared to tie President Obama to the Orlando club massacre
e) doubled down on his proposals to ban Muslims from the U.S. and enact racial profiling
f) promoted his own golf course in Scotland in the wake of Brexit

There are probably a few more controversies that we skipped over, but honestly it's hard to keep track of it all. The point is that before all that, Trump was already shaping up to be one of the least-popular modern-day presidential candidates since the former head of the Ku Klux Klan ran for president. He spent the past month making it that much more difficult for him to win over half of Americans.

But it's not over yet, of course

TrumpPolls

No surprise, Trump is no fan of our poll. And while we stand by the methodology, we will offer a word of caution about polls in general: They're a snapshot in time and not necessarily predictive of what's going to happen in the future.

Plus, in a handful of swing states that actually decide the election -- like Ohio and Pennsylvania -- Trump is actually tied with Clinton, according to recent Quinnipiac polling. (Clinton is way up in Florida.)

Plus, elections all come down to turnout, and the Post-ABC News poll found that Trump supporters are more certain they'll vote than Clinton supporters. So there's your silver lining, Trump supporters.

It may not be over for Trump, but history isn't kind, either

And The Fix's Philip Bump points out that a lot typically changes between now and Election Day (134 days!).

"At this point in 2004, 2008 and 2012, 134 days out, the person leading in the Real Clear Politics polling average ended up winning," Bump writes, "but in each of those contests, the eventual winner would lose his lead again before Election Day."

(Philip Bump / The Washington Post)

The state of the 2016 race, in one quote

"Trump is just insane," said Joe Place, 57, a retired autoworker who is undecided. "I vote Democrat, but I can’t vote for Hillary. ... I think she’s beholden to interests other than mine or the middle class."

These comments from an up-for-grabs voter in an up-for-grabs Detroit suburb come to us from The Washington Post's Philip Rucker and John Wagner, who talked to voters in the Rust Belt and Upper Midwest to see what could be in-play (perhaps a surprising amount of this typically safe Democratic territory). For our purposes, Place's musings about whom to vote for sums up this race perfectly: It's a race to the bottom between two very unpopular candidates. And voters are loathe to chose between them.

Unpopular

The poll numbers back that up. And it all but ensures the 2016 election will go down as one of the nastiest (and least substantive) in modern memory, writes Fix Boss Chris Cillizza, because both candidates will have nowhere to go but down even further.

"Knowing that they won't win by trying to convince people how great they are, both candidates and their campaigns will fully commit to tearing down the other in an attempt to be the last one standing on election night," Cillizza writes.

In other words, this presidential election is shaping up to be as difficult to watch/impossible-to-look-away-from as these epic fails I found on the Internets. At least, we at The Fix can't look away (from the gifs or the election), and we'll make sure we share with you all of 2016's most epic moments, right here in this newsletter and on The Fix.

Epic fail! (giphy.com)

Lol epic fail (giphy.com)

Oof, epic fail. (giphy.com)

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