Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Nate Silver: Clinton’s Lead Is As Safe As Kerry’s Was In 2004

538 reports:
There has been a lot of polling over the past few days in advance of the Republican National Convention, which got underway Monday in Cleveland. But it mostly confirmed the conclusion our election forecast models had arrived at late last week: Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 3 or 4 percentage points. That’s down from a lead of 6 or 7 percentage points a few weeks ago.

As a result, Trump’s odds have improved. He has a 36 percent chance of winning the election, according to our polls-only forecast, and a 38 percent chance according to polls-plus. (While the polls-only and polls-plus forecasts are well aligned now, they may begin to diverge during the conventions — more about that in a moment.)

But Clinton remains ahead of Trump in the clear majority of polls. She leads by about the same margin that Barack Obama did heading into the conventions in 2008, and by a somewhat larger margin than Obama did in 2012.

I’ve nevertheless detected a lot of consternation among Clinton voters: Why isn’t her position safer? There’s really about a 35 or 40 percent chance that Trump will become president?
An article worth your time.