The Latest Polls: Donald Trump Is Officially Within The Margin Of Error As The Race Tightens Closer
The presidential race is going to come down to who wins a majority of six swing states. With just three days until Election Day, Donald Trump has the momentum after climbing back in the polls. He’s within the margin of error in the last three national polls, but there’s a key reason why he’s still not the favorite to win.
For the first time this election, Hillary Clinton is under the 271 electoral college threshold on CNN’s electoral map. According to CNN, if the election were held right now, Trump has 204 electoral votes in the bag to Clinton’s 268. If Trump can sweep North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Nebraska, Florida, and Arizona on Election Day, he’ll become the next president of the United States. If Clinton can just meet expectations, she’ll become the first woman ever elected president.
Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor Joe Trippi believes Clinton still has the edge right now, but the polling over the past week has been slightly ticking in Trump’s favor.
“It’s going to be very tough for [Trump],” he told Fox News.
If Trump fails to win any of the aforementioned six swing states, he’ll need to make up for it by a surprising victory in a blue state.
“The clearest opportunity I see for Donald Trump is either he wins both New Hampshire and North Carolina or takes just Pennsylvania,” Arnon Mishkin, director of the Fox News Decision Team, said. “Trump needs to win all toss-up states…all of which, really, are quite do-able.”
Political junkies will recall that FBI director James Comey threw a wrench into this election by announcing newly discovered emails related to a prior investigation into the use of Clinton’s private email server. This news came at a time where Trump was slowly climbing in the polls. The national polls have now stabilized, but FiveThirtyEight‘s Nate Silver just spotted what could be a major issue for Clinton on Tuesday.
The data suggests New Hampshire is essentially tied. Clinton’s lead in Pennsylvania has slipped to just three points, and Michigan and New Mexico are also starting to trend away from Clinton at the worst moment.
“The map is getting messier for Clinton, changing a firewall of states that once seemed locked in,” Silver writes.
Since Trump is clearly the underdog, let’s dig deeper into the states Silver thinks are slipping away from Clinton with data from RealClearPolitics polling averages.
In New Hampshire, Trump maintains a lead by 1.6 points. Trump has not been behind in the last six polls out of The Granite State. In Pennsylvania, Clinton is up by 2.6 points which looks great on paper, but her lead was 5.2 points just five days ago.
In Michigan, Clinton is holding onto a lead of 4.8 points. Again, a lead of five points sounds significant, but Clinton was up in the polling average by 12 points just two weeks ago. A similar scenario can be found in the scarce polling data from New Mexico. A poll had Clinton up by 10 points on October 11, and her lead has been cut down to three points in the same poll on November 1.
Three of the four states we just went through are states that Trump will need to steal from Clinton if he fails to secure an overwhelming majority of the swing states. The race has definitely tightened, but Clinton still has the upper-hand. Clinton has a larger ground game that will be getting out the vote on Tuesday. Trump has more enthusiastic supporters. Since both candidates have extremely high unfavorable numbers, Clinton and Trump’s supporters will be motivated to stop their preferred candidate’s opponent. Is Trump’s last minute surge too little too late? The world will know the answer to that question in a few days.
[Featured Image by Pool/Getty Images]
