Hillary Clinton Is Still Nearly Inevitable

Nate Silver: “Personally, I give Clinton about an 85 percent chance of becoming the Democratic nominee. (The general election is a whole different story.) That’s a pinch higher than betting markets, which put her chances at 75 to 80 percent.”

“But wait — wasn’t Clinton ‘inevitable’ in 2008 too? Not to nearly the same extent. Her lead in the polls is considerably larger this time around, her edge in the endorsement race is much greater, and her opponents are weaker than Barack Obama and John Edwards were. If you set a lower threshold for ‘inevitability’ and included Clinton’s 2008 campaign in your equation, you’d probably also need to include winning campaigns like Romney in 2012 and Mondale in 1984, in which case the front-runners would be six-for-seven — an 86 percent success rate, which is about where I’d put Clinton’s chances now.”

“In fact, Gore is the only non-incumbent in the modern era to have swept all 50 states. (Two incumbents, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, also lost some states.) More often, candidates similar to Clinton have lost Iowa or New Hampshire, along with a few other states, before consolidating their support and eventually winning fairly easily.”