Donald Trump had a great couple of months between 8/7 and 9/12 where he cut Hillary Clinton’s lead from 6.8% to 2.0% on a very slow but consistent basis.  For the last week, the race has come to a standstill as Clinton made it back to the campaign trail from her brief pneumonia episode and the lead has fluctuated between 1% and 2% (It is currently at 1.6%).  It will likely be out of that range this time next week after Monday’s debates.  Which direction it moves is anybody’s guess.

Here is a trend of the polls:

Here are the last 10 polls:

Of course the election is not about national polls and popular votes.  It’s about the electoral college.  Please see previous posts or click below for updated  state by state forecast of the electoral outcome.

Click here for a state by state forecast of the elections

Click here for running list of forecast changes

Click here for results from last 5 elections

Follow me @2016ElectOdds for updates

Methodology:

• Use national polls listed at Real Clear Politics
• Weigh the outcomes by the sample size of each poll
• Account for the different days spanned for the poll by allocating it out across the days.
• Example a poll of 1000 voters taken across 7/2-7/5 would have a weighting of 250 voters for each of those days
• For each day, take the previous weighted 7 days worth of poll data to compute a percentage for each candidate.  The rolling 7 days decreases the impact of large polls taken on a single day (large sample electronic polls)

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Six state polls have been released since the last update, and while some are from some vary important battleground states (FL, GA, PA), there wasn’t anything new to move the forecast.  We are still at 294-244 which is the smallest Clinton lead since the middle of July.

Here are the polls that were released:

• Initial IL poll Clinton + 13 confirms state as solid D
• GA poll Trump +3 confirms state as likely R (he leads last three polls by similar margins)
• FL poll Clinton +1 confirms state as tossup (This state has gone back and forth the last few polls)
• PA poll Clinton +8 confirms state as likely D (Clinton has a bigger lead in this important state than Trump does in GA)
• Initial MN poll Clinton +6 confirms state as likely D
• OK poll Trump +15 confirms state as solid R

Here is the list of current tossups:

• AZ
• FL
• NC
• NV

Many once thoughts to be tossup states currently have Clinton in front including:

• CO
• NH
• PA
• VA
• WI

The above are the states Trump needs to swing back in order to win.

Here’s a trend of the forecast:

• Click here for a state by state forecast of the elections
• Click here for running list of forecast changes
• Click here for results from last 5 elections
• Follow me @2016ElectOdds for updates

Views – 601

Hillary Clinton’s episode with pneumonia helped Donald Trump close the gap, and raised the odds of her dropping out.  That is evidenced by Tim Kaine returning to the odds for the first time since December 2015.

Clinton dropped from 63.9% to 56.5%.  That is the fourth drop in a row and the lowest she has been since February of 2016.  Donald Trump picked up almost half of her drop increasing to 34.7% which is his all time high.  The 21.8% gap between the two is also the lowest it has been.

As a result of speculation that Clinton may drop out, the odds of three other Democrats increased.  Bernie Sanders improved his odds from 1.7% to 2.6%.  Even with that big increase, he dropped from 3rd place to 4th place as Joe Biden increased from 1.2% to 3.1%.  Tim Kaine was the third Democrat to make a jump as he went from not being on the board to 1.4%.

With Trump strengthening, the odds of  last minute Republican replacements dropped: Paul Ryan to 0.7%, Mitt Romney to 0.2%, and John Kasich to 0.2%.

Here is the full list of odds:

Looking at www.predictit.org for the House and Senate, the odds for a split government decreased as odds of a Republican controlled government increased.

The Republicans have always had a high probability of keeping the House, and that has increased in each of the last four weeks.  It is now at 90.0% up from 84.7% four weeks ago.

The biggest turnaround this week is on the Senate odds.  The Democrats still hold the edge for the Senate but the odds of them winning it straight are now under 50%, dropping from 53.1% to 42.0%.  The Republican odds of winning it jumped from 25.8% to 36.5%.  The odds of a 50/50 Senate where the VP breaks ties stayed fairly flat at 21.5%.

The jump in odds for the Republicans taking the Senate and Presidency improved the odds of the Republicans controlling the government from 24.5% to 31.0%, a new high.  The odds of the Democrats controlling it dropped to 11%.  This will be extremely low as long as the Republicans have an 85%+ chance of winning the House.  The odds of a split government dropped to 58.0%.

Here is a trend of those odds:

Click here for a state by state forecast of the Presidential elections

Click here for running list of electoral college forecast changes to Presidential elections

Click here for results from last 5 Presidential elections

Follow me @2016ElectOdds for updates

Views – 629