A number of Democrats have grown complacent about the Presidential Race. Given that Hillary Clinton has maintained a lead in all of the swing states since the Democratic convention and with Donald Trump continually undercutting his own candidacy, they are confident of victory. I recently read that that even Clinton campaign insiders are switching their sights to a landslide instead of a mere victory.
I hope they are right, but in politics overconfidence often leads to bad results and I am seeing signs that Hillary’s big leads in pivotal states have been steadily shrinking since the Democratic Convention as has the probability that she will win the election. Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this to throw cold water on the Clinton crowd. I am a big Hillary supporter, but I don’t like the way the polls are trending.
Nate Silver, probably the best election statistician in the nation. uses recent state polls which he adjusts for built in bias and timeliness, to predict the current probabilities of winning Presidency of each of the candidates on an ongoing basis. The results are posted on his FiveThirtyEight website. Who will win the presidency?
As you can see from the two screenshots below which were taken from the Silver’s website, according his calculations the probability that Hillary Clinton will win the Presidency as dropped from its high 89.2% on August 14th (right after the convention) to 71.5%. Donald Trump’s chances of winning have increased accordingly. (Since I took those screen shots, but before publication of this article, Hillary’s chances of winning have dropped again, to 69.1% – that’s how quickly new polls can affect Silver’s projections.)
(Snip)
Link to the rest of the article:
Election 2016 – Too Close for Comfort