Political winds can change rapidly, and while polling averages are a reliable predictor of an election’s outcome, no candidate wants to be fighting a headwind when the final ballots are being cast. That’s both good and bad news for Hillary Clinton, who retains an edge over Donald Trump, but who has seen her margin shrink dramatically in recent weeks among a maelstrom of negative press. Democratic partisans who were feeling cocky last month are now experiencing a twinge of panic.
To put things in perspective, the chances of Clinton winning the White House on November 8 are roughly back to where they were before the Democratic Convention in July. In the weeks that followed, the Democratic nominee’s odds surged as her lead widened over Trump. Multiple polls showed her leading in several key battleground states, sometimes by double digits. But Clinton has had a bad September, and the bilious billionaire has staged a insignificant resurgence. While Clinton was bedeviled by her interminable e-mail scandal and a ill-timed health scare, Trump mostly managed to rein in his worst instincts and stick to a teleprompter. The bar was extraordinarily low, and he more or less cleared it.
The results in the polls have been clear: Clinton and Trump are near a virtual tie once again, with Clinton leading by just 1.5 points in the average RealClearPolitics poll of polls. Individual polls over the past week highlight the movement in Trump’s direction, too. A New York Times/CBS News poll found that Clinton leads Trump by just 46 to 44 percent among likely voters, and when third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are added to the mix, the two are tied at 42 points apiece. In a four-way race, Rasmussen found that Trump led Clinton, 42 to 40, while Quinnipiac’s results indicated an equally close four-way race, with Clinton leading Trump 41 to 39. Most recently, a LA Times/USC Tracking poll of likely voters found Trump ahead by six, while a Fox News poll put him ahead by one.
There are a number of reasons why Clinton supporters should remain confident in their candidate. The former secretary of state remains in the lead in electoral college projections, even if her lead has slipped. FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast currently gives Clinton a 60.1 percent chance of winning, whereas she had close to 90 percent back in mid-August. The Times’s Upshot blog now gives Trump a 26 percent chance of taking office, up from less than 10 percent just three weeks earlier—a major improvement, but still about as likely as a professional N.F.L. kicker missing a 35-yard field goal.
Clinton’s support may also be underestimated by a slew of new polls that focus on likely voters, rather than just registered voters. Such surveys may be capturing the greater enthusiasm for Trump among likely voters, who are potentially less likely to cast a ballot on Election Day. The Republican nominee’s comparative lack of any ground game or field operation in multiple critical swing states could mean that he dramatically underperforms on November 8.
Still, a number of wild cards could still jeopardize Clinton’s chances. Long-shot libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson has found surprisingly strong support among young voters under 35, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, threatening to siphon away a critical Democratic voting bloc. Johnson didn’t clinch enough support nationally to make the presidential debate stage, which could cause his numbers to drop into trivial territory after the first Clinton-Trump showdown on September 26. But his rising popularity has coincided with a steep drop in Clinton’s popularity, and anecdotal evidence suggests more and more former Bernie Sanders supporters turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. The Democratic nominee has less than two months left to turn them back on before a nasty November surprise.
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/news...-trump-election-poll
