Clinton Firms Up Her Lead

Charlie Cook: “Let’s start with the caveats: A lot can hap­pen in the 34 days be­fore the elec­tion. The polls are not as re­li­able as they used to be. People act in un­pre­dict­able ways in the polling booth. All that said, this race has fallen in­to a fairly pre­dict­able pat­tern. When Don­ald Trump veers off mes­sage and Hil­lary Clin­ton per­forms well, her lead swells to 6, 7, or 8 points. When Trump sticks to his script and Clin­ton goes through a bumpy patch as she did with her bout of pneu­mo­nia, her edge drops down to 1 or 2 points, and some­times she winds up dead even. Most of the time, Clin­ton is up by 3 to 5 points.”

“When pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates are ahead by 3 points, they tend to lead by at least a little in a lot of states, and the Elect­or­al Col­lege in­flates their mar­gin of vic­tory. When the pop­u­lar-vote gap gets to 4 or 5 points, more states fall in line and the race turns in­to an elect­or­al rout. It’s only when a race is ef­fect­ively even or with­in a point or so does the Elect­or­al Col­lege be­come truly com­pet­it­ive.”