Hillary Clintons post-convention polling surge is showing no signs of fading. She leads Donald Trump, on average, by about 7 percentage points in national polls, and is an 83-percent favorite to win on Nov. 8, according to our polls-only model. Our polls-plus model which accounts for the fundamentals, as well as the tendency for a candidates numbers to temporarily rise after his or her convention gives her a 76 percent chance. Those are her largest advantages since we launched our election forecasts back in June. Heres polls-only:
?quality=90&strip=all&w=575&ssl=1
Clintons chances were buoyed by strong numbers in both national and state polling released this weekend:
-snip-
Our best bet: Wait a couple more weeks to see where the dust settles. Our now-cast, for example, which projects what would happen in a hypothetical election held today, has Clinton winning the popular vote by 8 percentage points. My guess is that that will tick down a couple of points in the coming days. Our polls-plus model, which accounts for convention bounces and so discounts some of Clintons recent surge, projects her to win on Nov. 8 by 4 points. And our polls-only model, which basically takes the polls at face-value, projects her to win by 7.
But its also possible that Clintons strong numbers arent solely the result of a fleeting post-convention afterglow. As my colleague Nate Silver pointed out on Friday, Trumps recent struggles his attacks on the Khan family and feuds with Republican leadership, for instance could be inflicting more durable damage to his chances. Trump is the least-liked major party nominee in modern history. Perhaps the conventions and their aftermath, when many voters presumably tuned into the 2016 race for the first time, established a new equilibrium. Perhaps this is 1988 all over again, with the parties reversed.
In 1988, Republican George H.W. Bush, looking to succeed an increasingly popular Ronald Reagan and give his party a third term in the White House, was trailing Democrat Michael Dukakis going into the conventions. But the conventions reset the race. Immediately after the conventions, Bush led Dukakis by an average of about 6 percentage points. In November, Bush defeated Dukakis by 8 points. Now, this year could end up being very different than 1988. Like Bush in 1988, however, Clinton is trying to replace a two-term president from her party whose popularity has been growing.