Hasta La Gadget!

HuffPost Pollster has new charts that allow users to compare poll questions with and without Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson named. Voters don’t see Hillary Clinton as an agent of change. And Americans are deeply divided by education level. This is HuffPollster for Thursday, July 28, 2016

GARY JOHNSON DOESN’T SEEM TO CHANGE THE TRAJECTORY OF THE RACE – “When polls ask voters to choose between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Clinton currently leads Trump by over 1 percentage point overall. When Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson is included in the question, that lead evaporates. Johnson himself averages nearly 9 percent support when he’s named in poll questions. Clinton loses over 4 percentage points to Johnson, going from 43.9 percent in questions without any explicit mention of him to 39.6 percent with the Libertarian in the picture. Trump drops more than 3 points, from 42.6 percent to 39.2 percent, when Johnson is a named option in the poll. If it seems counterintuitive that a Libertarian candidate would pull more from Clinton than from Trump, keep in mind that we’re in the middle of the conventions. Johnson was taking more from Trump than Clinton a few days ago.”  [HuffPost]

The numbers have shifted slightly since publication, but the general trend is still the same: Johnson pulls slightly more support from Clinton than Trump to make the race tied when he’s included. According to the estimates, without Johnson in the picture there’s about an 89 percent chance that Clinton leads Trump. With Johnson, that drops to a 65 percent chance that Clinton is ahead.

VOTERS KNOW MORE ABOUT CLINTON’S POSITIONS, DOUBT SHE WILL BRING CHANGE – Baxter Oliphant: “More voters say they know a lot about where Clinton stands on important issues than say the same about Trump. About half (53%) say they know a lot about Clinton’s positions; by comparison, fewer (43%) are confident they know where Trump stands. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are just as likely to say they know a lot about where Clinton stands (50%) as they are about Trump (53%). Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, on the other hand, say they know much more about Clinton’s positions (57% say a lot) than Trump’s (36%)….Even voters who say they will support Clinton in a matchup against Trump this fall say she’s unlikely to bring much change to the way things work in Washington. Well over half (58%) say this, while another 38% say she will bring positive change. Trump’s supporters are roughly evenly divided between those who say she would make things worse (52%) and those who say things wouldn’t change much under a Clinton administration (46%).” [Pew]

CLINTON AND TRUMP DIVIDE AMERICANS BY EDUCATION – Eli Yokley: “Among America’s most-educated voters, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton holds a strong lead over her Republican rival, Donald Trump, a Morning Consult analysis has found. But among voters who did not ever attend college – working class Americans to whom the Democratic Party hopes to appeal during its convention here this week – the race is nearly tied…. Clinton [has] a 17-point lead over Trump, 51 percent to 34 percent, among voters with post-graduate degrees. With voters who have only a bachelor’s degree, Clinton leads Trump, 45 percent to 40 percent….Trump once said, ‘I love the poorly educated,’ and according to the survey, he has an advantage with voters over the age of 65 who did not attend college, leading Clinton 49 percent to 33 percent. Among the entire population of those who did not attend college, Trump led Clinton by only 1 point during the survey period, 41 percent to 40 percent.” [Morning Consult]

The Democratic Party no longer relies on working-class whites – Ronald Brownstein: “[E]xcept for Bill Clinton in 1996, no Democrat has won more than 40 percent of white voters without a college education since 1980, according to media exit polls. On a national basis, Democrats have largely replaced them with increased support from Millennials, minorities, and college-educated whites—while running just enough above their national numbers among working-class whites in the key Midwestern battlegrounds to retain the advantage in those pivotal states….Even so, many in the party are incredulous that so many blue-collar whites are flocking to Donald Trump, a candidate Democrats view as uniquely divisive and unqualified. The post-Republican National Convention polls released on Monday poked directly at that anxiety. Trump held big leads among non-college whites in the surveys released by both CBS (23 percentage points) and CNN/ORC (fully 39 percentage points). The CNN poll had Trump attracting not only 69 percent of non-college white men but 64 percent of white women without college degrees—and recording most of his convention gains among the latter.” [The Atlantic]

MANY AMERICANS AREN’T SATISFIED WITH TREATMENT OF MINORITY GROUPS – Art Swift: “Among six key groups in society, Americans are least satisfied with the way Arabs and immigrants are treated in the U.S. Less than half of Americans are satisfied with the treatment of either group. In contrast, Americans are most satisfied with the way Asians are treated (75% very or somewhat satisfied). A slim majority, 51%, are satisfied with the treatment of blacks….Thirty-two percent of black Americans say they are satisfied with how society treats blacks, within two percentage points of the lowest reading over the past 15 years. Americans of other racial and ethnic identities are more positive about the treatment of blacks, however. Forty-seven percent of Hispanics and 56% of whites are satisfied with society’s treatment of blacks.” [Gallup]

HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL! – You can receive this daily update every weekday morning via email! Just click here, enter your email address, and click “sign up.” That’s all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).

THURSDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ – Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:

-Donald Trump is performing poorly among Catholic voters. [538]

-The Republican Convention speeches increased support for Trump. [PSB Research]

-John McCormick says that convention bounces are like sugar highs. [Bloomberg]

-Mark Blumenthal digs deeper into the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll that showed no convention bounce for Trump. [SurveyMonkey]

-Stephen Sestanovich explains why Trump’s pro-Russia stance won’t help him among voters. [WSJ] 

-Nate Silver argues that the Democratic primary actually wasn’t a close race at all. [538]

-Danny Hayes predicts that Clinton’s nomination could cause more women to become politically involved and to run for office. [WashPost]

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Happiness Secret 1: You’ll never miss a single, glorious springtime dawn. 

No matter how early the sun is coming up now that daylight saving time has kicked in. Sure, you hadn’t planned on waking up quite so early—you got home from the after-party at, what, 2 a.m.? But now, the light is filtering in through the blinds, and a certain someone is stalking around your pillow, licking your face and—when you try to bury it in your arm—poking her paw under your elbow…oh, you’re awake? Why, what a coincidence—my food dish is empty!

Happiness Secret 2: No matter how poor you think your sense of humor is—No one ever laughs at my jokes. Why can’t I land a punch line? And why on earth couldn’t I come up with something devastatingly clever to say when I ran into my ex last night with his new girlfriend?—you live with at least one creature who has an even worse one.

Who, in fact, possesses absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever. This doesn’t mean that cats don’t do hilarious things by mistake. (See: all of YouTube.) They just never let on.

Happiness Secret 3: Who knew? Your down comforter does fit into your washing machine.

Something you’d never have discovered were it not for… well, never mind. After all, it washed right out, and now you know. Aren’t you happier?

Happiness Secret 4: Fickle expressions of love can be quite gratifying.

Your cat has ignored you all day, but then… the sudden weight landing on the bed, just as you’re tumbling to sleep, the little cat’s feet pick-pocking over your own and the warm lump curling up behind your knees. This must be what it feels like to have a teenage child who’s been distant and disdaining for months suddenly turn to you in the car and ask for your take on a cryptic text from a crush. You don’t know how it happened, but you’ve become cool again. Or at least tolerable. And with a cat, you know for sure that it’s not because someone just remembered who will be paying for college in a few years.

Happiness Secret 5: You and your cat have your own secret language.

Studies on feral cat colonies have turned up the surprising fact that cats living together in the wild, without humans, don’t meow to one another. They rarely vocalize at all. Researchers believe that cats meow to us because we talk to them. What’s more, there is no universal cat-human dictionary. In his 2013 book,Cat Sense, John Bradshaw writes that “each cat and its owner gradually develop an individual ‘language’ that they both understand, but that is not shared by other cats or other owners.” So, yes, your cat really does understand you, and you her.

Happiness Secret 6: You don’t need to go on a hike to get in touch with nature.

Felis catus is an ambassador of the wild kingdom who’s taken shelter under your roof. This is a realization that may hit you unexpectedly, when you catch the eye of a fox, or a squirrel, or a deer or even a songbird on the lawn and see the essence of something familiar, something you see in your own home, in your own cat’s eyes.

Happiness Secret 7: Mystery makes the heart grow fonder.

Your cat’s love for catnip doesn’t surprise you, but ziplock bags? She’ll steal one and play with it for hours. And why does she ignore the slice of cheddar and carefully pull the cracker underneath it onto the floor to eat? You have no idea, but she does, then finishes the whole thing.

Happiness Secret 8: The world is so much better with you around.

The proof being your cat, waiting for you at the end of a long, exhausting day, standing on his hind legs at the patio door, stretching up toward the handle (looking exactly like Dustin Hoffman banging on the church doors at the end of The Graduate). Once you get inside, there’s the official dance of welcome, as he does his best to weave between your legs as you do your best to walk down the hall carrying the groceries. This is, of course, before he decides to punish you for your abandonment by ignoring you until he hears you open the can of cat food. Diagnosis: cat.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A company called iPatrol has a new HD camera robot called Riley. The little bot cruises around your home on two-rubber tank-tread like strips. It is able to see in the dark with night vision tech and can alert the homeowner when motion is detected. Riley is operated via an app that is available for iOS and Android devices. The … Continue reading

When you think of wireless charging, you probably think of special charging pads for your phone. But what if your phone could partly charge itself? Radient Micro-Tech claims to have managed just that. It just received two patents for technology that…

A little over a week ago, we reported that Pokemon GO gamers were accidentally shot when a person mistook them for burglars. Now according to new reports, it seems that we have ourselves another Pokemon GO-related shooting in which a 26-year old by the name of Gregory Wheeler was shot 3 times while playing the game in Linden Park.

According to the report, Wheeler was out playing the game in the park when he was approached by a 14-year old boy who said he wanted to borrow Wheeler’s phone to call his mother. Wheeler lent the boy his phone, who then proceeded to hop onto a bike and ran off, with Wheeler naturally giving chase.

However he soon found himself surrounded by a group of men who punched him in the head and shot him three times. Thankfully the gunshots weren’t to particularly vital areas of his body and were aimed at his foot, and once in each thigh, presumably trying to disable Wheeler so that he would not be able to chase them.

Like we said, it wasn’t critical and Wheeler is in the hospital recovering from surgery. According to Local prosecutor Ron O’Brien, “If you’re going to play the game, it would be wise to travel in pairs, be cognizant of your surroundings, pay attention to what time of day you are playing, use caution when alerting strangers of your future location, and do not venture into locations that would otherwise be considered dangerous.”

Pokemon GO Player Shot Three Times In The Park , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.