Trump Currently Trailing Clinton In Every Swing State
Recent polls give a major advantage to Hillary Clinton, who now leads her Republican rival, Donald Trump, in every single swing state.
Polling averages taken after both candidates officially received the nomination at their parties’ conventions show Clinton leading by single digits in states like Ohio and Florida, while Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Virginia and Colorado show more dramatic shifts in her favor, according to Vox.
While most of those states typically lean to the left, Virginia and Colorado have a long history of voting Republican, with the exception of 2008 and 2016, when President Barack Obama won each of the two states. Clinton currently leads by double digits in each state.
If Clinton wins all of the states where she is currently a heavy favorite, Vox projects that she will take 273 electoral votes, while Trump will have 164 under the same criteria. Either candidate needs 270 in order to win the election.
As of now, most surveys show Clinton as the heavy favorite to win the presidency, although summer poll results are notoriously unreliable for several reasons, notes the BBC.
First of all, Clinton is currently experiencing what is known as a “convention bounce,” as her polling numbers shot up since the Democratic National Convention. But whether or not the surge will last more than a few weeks is not yet known.
Meanwhile, fewer and fewer Americans owning landline phones can further complicate efforts to obtain accurate polling results.
“It’s hard to get a representative sample of Americans to take a survey online or by phone, and even if you do get a good sample, it’s difficult to tell who is actually going to turn out to vote,” Clifford Young, the president of US Public Affairs for Ipsos polling, told the BBC.
Low voter turnout and ballots cast for a third party candidate could also determine who wins the election between two historically unpopular candidates.
“The desire to vote for neither candidate complicates things,” added Young. “The protest vote can have potential to really impact the outcome when it comes to the election.”