The damage from the Comey letter has become very clear, and its impact seems to be around 2.5%-3.0%:  The letter was released on Friday and Clinton had a lead of about 3.8%-3.9% on that Thursday and Friday.  By Monday the lead was down to 2.1% and it has bounced between 1.9% and 2.3% the last 6 days.  The current Clinton lead is at 2.2%.  What’s interesting in the polls is both candidates have recently declined.  Last Monday it was Clinton 45.3% and Trump 43.1%.  On Saturday it’s 44.9% to 42.7%.

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)

Views – 922

Donald Trump continued to close the electoral gap this week by moving some of the tossup states into his column, increasing his lead in some states, and narrowing the lead in some of the states that Hillary Clinton leads.

The biggest impact came in states that were tossup last week that now seem to be leaning towards Trump including:

• OH (Trump +5, +4, tie)
• NV (Trump +6,  +4, tie)
• AZ (Trump +4, +5, +5)
• IA (Trump +1, +3, +7)
• NH (Trump +5, +2, tie)

States where Trump already leads and where he increased  his odds included:

• Solidifying TX after his lead shrank.  The last three polls have him up +13,  +9, and +14
• Moving UT from lean R to solid R with the last three polls coming in at +6, +12, +5

States that Clinton leads in where Trump has narrowed her gap:

• VA (Clinton +4, +7, +5)
• ME (Clinton +4, +5, +11)
• MI (Clinton +3, +4,  +5)
• NM (Clinton +4, +13, +3)

Clinton made some progress in two must win states for Trump.  It looks like she might have a slight edge in FL which was previously a tossup given the last three polls (Clinton +2, +1, +4).  She has also narrowed his lead in once solid R GA (Trump +1, +4, +2).

These gains have closed the forecast gap to the current 300 to 238 from the previous 311 to 222.  Trump got as close as  294-244 on 11/2.  That was the closest he has been since 9/29 (289-249).

The list of tossups has shrunk from last week’s 5 to just 1 (NC)

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

• CO
• FL
• PA
• VA
• WI

Trump has done a great job over the last week to swing some of the tossup states to his side including:

• IA
• NV
• OH
• NH

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 – 884

The betting odds seems to have stabilized after last week’s reaction to the Comey letter.  Hillary Clinton’s odds actually improved to 71.8% up from 0.8% last Saturday morning.  It’s interesting that the betting odds of winning seem to be higher for Clinton  than most models predict (fivethiryeight model is at 64.5%).  Donald Trump held fairly steady down 0.1% to 25.3%.  The current lead of 46.4% is down from 61.5% just two weeks ago.  The big mover on the week was Bernie Sanders, who spiked last week on news of the letter and has come down from that 1.2% to 0.5%.

Here are the current odds:

Looking at www.predictit.org for the House and Senate, the odds for a split government increased as the odds of the Democrats controlling the government took a dive.

The odds of the Republicans keeping the House improved to to a new high of 94.9%.  Previous high was 90.0% in the middle of September.

The odds of the Democrats straight up capturing the Senate declined from 51.1% to 41.3%. That is more than a 20% decline in just two weeks the lowest since the end of September. The odds of a split Senate increased slightly to 21.1% from 18.1%. This puts the odds of the Republicans maintaining control at 37.7%, a big jump from two weeks ago when it was at a low of 20.5% and the highest since September 24.

The fact that the Republican improved their odds of winning the House and Senate was reflected in the odds of controlling the government which spiked from 11.5% two weeks ago to 22.0%, the highest since October 1.  The odds of the Democrats winning all three got cut in half from 15% to 7.5%, a new low. That is a function of the Republicans having a near lock on winning the House. The most likely scenario continues to be a split government: the odds increased from 67.5% to 70.5%.

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 – 798