Now, don’t get me wrong. Maybe Trump could win the election against Hillary. In fact, maybe any of the candidates could, if she gets weak enough.

So I’m not doubting the possibility of it. But I doubt the motives of the NY Times or Politico or other left-leaning periodicals when they continue to say he will do well against Clinton, in the absence of evidence that he would do any better against her than other Republican candidates, and the presence of evidence that he would actually do worse against her than they would.

It’s also curious to me that none of these articles seem to actually analyze the polls to come to their conclusions. I have looked at the polls, and continue to do so, and have come to the conclusion that, at least so far, they indicate that Trump would be the weakest candidate of the GOP frontrunners in a head-to-head against Clinton.

That doesn’t mean it couldn’t change—it most definitely could. But so far it hasn’t. Everything else is speculation.

So here’s the latest from Politico on the subject. The author asserts that Trump would do well with blacks; I’ve seen that said before, but I’ve never seen a poll that indicates Trump does better than the other GOP candidates with black voters in a one-on-one contest with Hillary. Wouldn’t you want to see that evidence in order to believe that it’s true? I would. After all, there’s no reason it couldn’t be true. If I had to guess, without looking at any polls, I’d say it certainly might be true.

But what’s true is that, although I’ve looked at many polls, I’ve not found one that supports it. Notice also that the Politico article on how Trump could win (entitled “How Trump Defeats Hillary Clinton”) talks about how Trump might or could defeat Clinton, according to his supporters and to “Republican pollsters,” but doesn’t link to any polls that show it or that show his support from blacks. The most you read there about it is that Frank Luntz says he’s talked to some black people who voted for Obama and who say they would consider voting for Trump. How many? What percentage? How many of them said they would consider voting for the other Republicans? Crickets.

And despite the fact that opinions are all the article cites to support the idea, the article’s lede goes like this:

If Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States, there will be plenty of surprises along the way. One of the biggest will be the help he gets from black voters. According to Republican pollsters and Trump’s allies, the GOP poll-leader ”” who has been dogged by accusations of racism, most recently for tweeting out a chart that exaggerated the share of murders committed by blacks ”” is poised to out-perform with this demographic group in a general-election matchup with Hillary Clinton.

I can’t escape the idea that the liberal/left press is pushing a Donald Trump candidacy because they feel he’s actually the weakest candidate.

As far as polls that actually attempt to measure the amount of black support for the various candidates go, I recently analyzed the numbers here:

If you look closely at questions 22-25 in that poll, which was taken January 4-7 and involved a sample of 1006 respondents queried by telephone (cell and landline), you will see that Trump does slightly worse against Hillary among Democrats and among black voters than the other leading GOP candidates do. Take a look if you don’t believe me””and these are typical of results I’ve seen in earlier polls. In a matchup against Hillary, Cruz gets 11% of those identifying as Democrats, whereas Hillary gets 6% of people who say they are Republicans. Rubio gets 12% of Democrats against Hillary’s 5% of Republicans, a trifle better. Bush (remember him?) gets 10% of Democrats to Hillary’s 7% of Republicans, a tiny bit worse. And Trump gets 9% of Democrats to Hillary’s 8% of Republicans, which is a bit worse, although they all cluster rather closely together and the differences are not so very significant. Against Hillary, Cruz gets 5% of the black vote, but Rubio gets 9% of the black vote. Could be significant, I suppose. Bush gets 6% of the black vote against her. And Trump? 4% of the black vote. Again””except perhaps for Rubio””they all are very similar, but Trump does slightly worse.

Most polls don’t break the support of each candidate down by race, which is what enables people to speculate airily on the subject. But some polls do, and that’s what they say.

The most recent national poll available doesn’t have a breakdown that measures black support for each GOP candidate, either. But it does have head-to-head numbers for the GOP lead candidates against Clinton. The news for Trump there certainly contradicts the Politico piece and all the hype—because once again Trump does very poorly against her (the questions were asked by NBC/WSJ between January 9-13).

In a matchup against Clinton, here’s how the candidates do. I’ve reported the Clinton figure first in each case:

Clinton/Trump 51/41

Clinton/Rubio 47/46

Clinton/Cruz 49/45

This is consistent with every single poll I’ve seen during the last few months. Sometimes all the Republicans win, sometimes they all lose (except Rubio, who consistently beats her). But Trump always does the worst. Now it’s possible there’s some poll I haven’t seen, but I’ve been following this fairly closely for a long, long time, and the trends are extremely clear. One poll or another tends not to tell the whole story, but the average tells you a lot more, although nothing’s infallible.

That NBC/WSJ poll had some other interesting figures, too. In the same poll, Sanders beats Trump 54/39 (the pollsters didn’t ask about Sanders versus the other candidates; at least, I didn’t see any questions about it.). Also, respondents who were likely to vote in the GOP primary were asked about 2-person battles within the primary. If the only choice were Trump vs. Rubio, Trump would win the primary 52 to Rubio’s 45. That seems to reflect the conservative distaste for Rubio, although Rubio polls best against Clinton. But if the two-person primary race were Trump versus Cruz, Cruz would beat Trump 51 to Trump’s 43. That indicate that, if people were to drop out of the race (if they ever manage to do so), Cruz would probably get the nomination, if this poll is accurate and trends remained the same.

I haven’t noticed any newspaper highlighting that finding. I wonder why (that’s sarcasm, by the way).