Can Clinton hold the lead through final day?

As the American election campaign rolls into its final weekend before Tuesday’s vote, Hillary Clinton remains the favourite to become the next US president. Her edge over Donald Trump remains narrow but her recent decline in the polls seems to have halted. Nevertheless, the margin she enjoys over the Republican nominee remains small enough that it could be overturned over these final days. As of Friday’s Presidential Poll Tracker update, Clinton has the support of 47.4% of decided voters, compared to 44.5% for Trump. That margin of 2.9 points is far more comfortable than the 1.9-point margin she had in the polls at the beginning of this week. Though the polls are not all moving in Clinton’s favour, the general trends seem positive for the Democratic nominee. The daily tracking polls have shown her numbers either holding or improving, while a handful of non-tracking polls published at the end of the week indicated wider leads. Her advantage in the electoral college remains significant. Clinton is ahead in enough states to give her 323 electoral college votes, with the remaining 215 going to Trump. But there are enough tight swing states to push Trump over the 270 mark needed to win. To get there, he will need to make some gains between today and Tuesday. Considering where the polls stood on the final weekend before the votes in 2012, 2008 and 2004, that is certainly possible.

Movement over last days small

Over the last three elections, the margin between the Republican and Democratic candidates has only shifted by 1.1 points or less, according to RealClearPolitics’s polling averages for the Fridays before past election days and on election day itself. That wouldn’t be enough to put Trump ahead of Clinton in the polls by Tuesday. But he doesn’t need to be ahead in the polls — he needs to be ahead in ballots cast. There have been greater differences between the polls on the Friday before election day and the actual results — but not always. In 2004, George W Bush won by 0.2 points less over John Kerry than the polls had predicted four days earlier. Barack Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain was 0.7 points wider on election day. The 2016 US election, however, is a very different beast. Voting intentions were very stable over the final weeks of the last three elections. In 2012, Obama’s lead over Romney held at two points or less over the final month. In 2008, his lead over McCain never wavered from a range of five to eight points.

Playing the odds

That means Donald Trump is as likely to win the election on Tuesday as Mitt Romney was in 2012, at least on paper. But Trump has a few advantages Romney did not. Trump has spent the last week making gains in the polls, while Romney’s numbers were stagnant. Clinton’s unfavourable ratings are far higher than Obama’s were four years ago (though Trump is less popular than his Republican predecessor, too). And assumptions based on past electoral experience have proven unreliable ever since Trump launched his unorthodox campaign last year. Nevertheless, Clinton has advantages of her own. She has led in the polls throughout this campaign. She has led in most swing states throughout this campaign. She has a significantly better get-out-the-vote organization on the ground, a factor that could make the difference if the election goes down to the wire. And late shifts can go both ways. On the one hand, a swing of three points towards Trump would decide the election in his favour. A swing of three points towards Clinton, on the other hand, would give it to her in a cakewalk. [This is an excerpt of a CBC article, which can be found at http://bit.ly/2fFMYsK]