I like the conclusion of Tom Bevan’s post at RealClearPolitics in response to Hillary Clinton’s complaint that she isn’t winning by 50 points:
Her task would be difficult for a great politician, let alone someone with Clinton’s baggage. To paraphrase then-Sen. Obama’s backhanded compliment of her during a debate in 2008: She’s likable enough. But just barely – and only because her opponent is even less likable in the eyes of so many voters. But she doesn’t need to win by 50 points, she only needs to win by one, and that X-factor — Donald Trump’s own baggage — is why she’s ahead at all.
Over at FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver makes a similar point with numbers:
Right now, Clinton is over the line by exactly one state. As of this writing, that state — what we also call the tipping-point state — is New Hampshire. But a group of states are closely lumped together, and Pennsylvania, Colorado and Wisconsin have all taken their turn as the tipping-point state in recent weeks.
If she wins all those states and everything toward the blue end of the snake, Clinton would finish with 272 electoral votes, even assuming she loses the 2nd Congressional District of Maine. (Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by congressional district.) That’s two more than she needs to win the election.
But in different ways, that both understates and overstates how precarious Clinton’s position is. It understates it because Clinton has no margin to spare. Clinton’s polling has been somewhere between middling and awful in most of the other swing states lately, and they all at least lean toward Trump at the moment, narrowly in some cases (such as Florida) and more clearly in others (such as Iowa). If Clinton loses any of the states on the blue side of the snake without picking anything up on the red side, she’ll be stuck on 269 electoral votes or fewer.
As I’ve said before the only poll that makes any difference is the one that takes place on the first Tuesday of November. Anybody who thinks this election is anything but too close to call is looking at something other than the emerging facts.
How in the heck did we get into this idiotic situation?
The one that is COUNTED on the first Tuesday in November. Voting is already underway in several places.