We are at the halfway point of the 2016 presidential election. And the odds makers are in overdrive predicting whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the next leader of the free world.
Nate Silver, CEO of FiveThirtyEight and America’s best political statistician, today projected Clinton has a 79 percent chance of winning the general election against Trump, who has only a 20 percent chance.
“Here’s how to think about it: We’re kind of at halftime of the election right now, and she’s taking a seven-point, maybe a 10-point lead into halftime,” said Silver who correctly forecast 49 out of 50 states in 2008 and every state in 2012. “There’s a lot of football left to be played, but she’s ahead in almost every poll, every swing state, every national poll.”
His projection is backed up by Ballotpedia, a non-partisan online political resource, which released polling today in seven key swing states. Clinton leads Trump in all of them — Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — by margins ranging from 4 to 17 percentage points.
Silver says no candidate has blown a lead as big as Clinton’s in over thirty years.
“It’s been a crazy year, politically,” said Silver. “For example, Arizona looks like a toss-up. Maybe Georgia. Maybe Missouri, North Carolina again.”
Silver admits he underestimated Trump in the primaries, at one point only giving him a 2 percent chance to win the nomination.
“Trump has never really been ahead of Clinton in the general election campaign,” said Silver. “He did a great job of appealing to the 40 percent of the GOP he had to win the primary election — a lot different than winning 51 percent of 100 percent in November.”