If the election was held today, Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton, according to political forecaster Nate Silver of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight.
TRUMP now leads in 538's now-cast, our estimate of what would happen in an election today. https://t.co/djsqNajFrh pic.twitter.com/7DvrdieHOw
Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 25, 2016
Using the site’s NowCast — a poll-based forecasting model that calculates the probability of a candidate winning if they election were held today — Silver says the Republican nominee would have a 57 percent chance of winning the Electoral College if presidential election votes were cast today. While this data comes off the heels of the GOP convention in Cleveland, Trump’s post-nomination bump is bigger than Clinton’s decline, which suggests the real-estate mogul has snagged support from some undecided and third-party voters.
Silver noted polling data around convention time is historically inaccurate, but even before the GOP named Trump as its nominee in Cleveland last week, Clinton’s support dipped in the polls. The scandal-plagued former Secretary of State’s waning support shouldn’t be a reason for Democrats to panic just yet, though, as Clinton receive bounce in the polls after the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week:
So if the race is still tied two or three weeks from now — or Trump is ahead — then it will really be time for Democrats to panic and for Trump fans to rejoice. For now, we can say that Clinton isn’t just going to glide to victory. Trump has a real chance at becoming president, and although Clinton is still favored, she’s already had a bumpy ride.
Silver’s proclamation about Trump’s electoral chances was salt on the wound for Democrats this week. The national Democratic party is currently dealing with its own e-mail scandal following the leak of thousands of DNC e-mails leaked this week by Wikileaks. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has already announced she will step down at the end of the week and will not oversee the convention proceedings. Wasserman Schultz was forced out after leaked e-mails showed that she and her staff were running interference for Hillary Clinton throughout the Democratic presidential primary this year.
Clinton will officially accept her party’s nomination on Thursday night in Philadelphia.
