Nate Silver is back at it. Politico reports Nate Silver: 79 Percent Chance Clinton Wins.
Hillary Clinton has a nearly 80 percent chance of winning the White House in November, FiveThirtyEight polling guru Nate Silver predicted Wednesday.
FiveThirtyEight projected Clinton has a 79 percent chance of winning the general election against Donald Trump, who has just a 20 percent chance of succeeding President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.
“Here’s how to think about it: We’re kind of at halftime of the election right now, and she’s taking a seven-point, maybe a 10-point lead into halftime,” Silver told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America.” “There’s a lot of football left to be played, but she’s ahead in almost every poll, every swing state, every national poll.”
Indeed, a Ballotpedia survey of seven swing states released Wednesday shows the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee sweeping Trump in Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia by margins ranging from 4 to 17 percentage points.
Battleground bloodbath
Also consider Battleground bloodbath: Clinton Leads Trump in 7 Swing States.
Hillary Clinton is polling higher than Donald Trump in seven swing states, holding leads ranging from 4 to 17 percentage points, according to a poll released Wednesday.
Of the seven states polled by Ballotpedia, Clinton’s lead was smallest in Iowa, where registered voters who responded to the poll preferred her by 4 points. The former secretary of state’s largest lead came in Michigan, a traditionally Democratic-leaning state where Trump has said he could compete in November. Clinton leads the Manhattan billionaire there by 17 points, 50 percent to 33 percent.
Clinton also holds double-digit leads over Trump in Florida (14 points), Pennsylvania (14 points) and North Carolina (10 points). Respondents preferred her to Trump by 9 points in Ohio and 7 points in Virginia.
National Poll: Clinton, Trump in Dead Heat
If you don’t like the above poll, then consider this one: National poll: Clinton, Trump in Dead Heat.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are running neck and neck in a national Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters released Wednesday, as majorities of Americans agree that neither candidate will be a good president and levels of hatred and prejudice have increased as a result of the presidential election.
While Clinton leads Trump 42 percent to 40 percent, her advantage is half of what it was in a Quinnipiac poll conducted at the end of May that found her with a 4-point lead of 45 percent to 41 percent. The latest survey comes on the heels of two national polls, one an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey that showed Clinton with a 5-point lead of 46 percent to 41 percent, and another, an ABC News/Washington post poll that showed the former secretary of state leading by 12 points, 51 percent to 39 percent.
State Results Not National Polls Will Determine Winner
Results at the state level not national polls will determine the outcome. That said, 79% seems on the high side. Lots of things can happen.
To be sure, Trump has done and said some really dumb things. What it takes to win the election and nomination are two different things.
All Trump had to do to win this thing, was reach out to the middle on hot issues like abortion and gun control, and take some sort of moderate position on the military and military spending. That would have pissed off the right, but so what?
With the exception of extreme war mongers who may prefer the leading war candidate anyway, Trump has the conservative vote tied up. What are they going to do? Vote for Hillary and extreme positions on gun control?
At the tiny cost of upsetting the far right, Trump would have picked up massive numbers of independents and rust-belt Democrats. Instead, he offended the independents who remain his only chance to win this.
Looking ahead, Trump needs to sound presidential. “Lyin’ Hillary” is not a great campaign slogan. “Make America Great Again” is.
Are the odds 79% to 21%? I don’t think so. They are more like 62-65% for Hillary. That’s still a lot of damage to a campaign that was close to a tossup.
Were this any other year, 79% would seem reasonable. But this year we learned a vital History Lesson: Don’t Count On History.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
