From Politico:
Political analyst Nate Silver’s latest forecast has Republican nominee Donald Trump with a 15 percentage point-greater chance of beating presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if the election were held today, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Silver’s “now-cast,” updated with fresh surveys on Monday, shows Trump’s current likelihood of winning at 57.5 percent, compared with Clinton’s 42.5 percent. In the 11 battleground states, Colorado, Virginia and Michigan would go to Clinton, while Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa would go to Trump.
The breakdown shifts a bit between the Electoral College and the popular vote. Silver’s model currently predicts the popular vote going 45.4 percent to Trump vs. 45.1 percent to Clinton, but the Electoral College giving Trump a wider margin of victory, 285 votes and Clinton 252.6.
That’s just one of those “if the election were held today” snapshots, of course, but still notable. As I mentioned the other day, the normally negative coverage of a Republican convention was even more ridiculous this year. It’s reflective of the growing unrest in the electorate at large (see all of the turmoil at the beginning of the DNC today) that Trump was able to come out of that spin-fest even stronger.
Silver still has Dame van der Cankles ahead in the long run, but there’s plenty of time for that to change. Silver also noted that this is well beyond the normal convention bounce:
“It’s not Trump’s convention bounce per se that should worry Dems. That’s pretty normal. It’s how it became so close to begin with,” Silver tweeted. “Trump trailed by around 3 points in our forecasts a week ago. Typical convention bounce is 4 points. So you end up at Trump +1 or so.”
The ball is in Hillary’s court now. She’ll get cover from the press, naturally, but will she be able to overcome the very vocal Bernie dissenters and wipe out Trump’s surge?
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