'We could really use some more Idaho polls!' is generally not a thought that implies the Republican nominee is going to become president.
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Nate Silver
Nathaniel Read "Nate" Silver (born January 13, 1978) is an American statistician and writer who analyzes baseball (see sabermetrics) and elections (see psephology). He is the editor-in-chief of ESPN's FiveThirtyEight and a Special Correspondent for ABC News. Silver first gained public recognition for developing PECOTA, a system for forecasting the performance and career development of Major League Baseball players, which he sold to and then managed for Baseball Prospectus from 2003 to 2009. After Silver successfully called the outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, he was named one of The World's 100 Most Influential People by Time in 2009. In 2010, the FiveThirtyEight blog was licensed for publication by The New York Times. In 2012 and 2013, FiveThirtyEight won Webby Awards as the "Best Political Blog" from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. In the 2012 United States presidential election, Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In July 2013, FiveThirtyEight was sold to ESPN, and Silver became its Editor in Chief. The ESPN-owned FiveThirtyEight launched on March 17, 2014. The site focused on a broad range of subjects under the rubric of "data journalism
But what do the polls say? The race probably is tightening — but perhaps not as much as the hype on the cable networks would imply. In our polls-only forecast, Trump has narrowed Clinton’s lead in the popular vote to roughly 6 percentage points from 7 points a week ago, and his chances of winning…
Pretty much everyone has an incentive to push the narrative that the presidential race is tightening. The television networks would like for you to keep tuning in to their horse-race coverage. Hillary Clinton’s campaign would like for you to turn out to vote, instead of getting complacent. Donald…
Strategy No. 4: Drop an opposition research bomb on Trump Speaking of which, I often see reporters speculating or predicting that the Clinton campaign is sitting on one or two major pieces of opposition research about Trump, which they’ll leak to the press at a time of maximum strategic advantage.…
Strategy No. 3: Let it go This is the opposite of strategy No. 1. Here the Clinton campaign lays low after calculating that the story will die of its own accord. And it may be what we see if the campaign doesn’t see much impact from the FBI news in public and internal polls by early next week. The…
Strategy No. 2: Rile up Democratic partisans by attacking Comey and other targets While Clinton herself hasn’t yet attacked Comey’s motivations, her top surrogates and advisors like John Podesta are already doing so. There’s the risk of hypocrisy here given that some of these same Clinton surrogates…
Strategy No. 1: Demand more details from Comey This was Clinton’s initial strategy during her brief press conference on Friday, where she said that ‘the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately.’ This approach carries a couple of advantages. First, Clinton may…
I’ve heard from people who wonder whether Friday’s news – that FBI director James Comey was investigating additional emails that may be pertinent to Hillary Clinton’s private email server — might have come too late in the campaign to be reflected in the polls, and therefore in our forecast, before…