Now that the presidential debates have finished, we’ve updated our electoral map once again. Like our last update, this one shifted more states away from Donald Trump.
The biggest shift: Florida, the nation’s largest swing state, is now light blue, as we’ve moved it from the battleground category to a Democratic lean.
In all, our map shows Clinton ahead in states with 308 electoral votes — 38 more than the 270 needed to win the presidency. Trump has 174. Five states, with 56 electoral votes, are toss-ups.
We had kept Florida as a toss-up in our previous update of the map because of its history as the scene of some of the country’s closest electoral battles.
As Democratic strategist Steve Schale likes to note about his state, in the past four elections, about 30.5 million presidential votes have been cast in Florida, and the difference between Republicans and Democrats comes to 71,000 votes — just 0.24% of the total. No other state has been closer.
But this year, Clinton seems to be on track to break that pattern. She has led in nine of the last 10 public polls, and her lead appears to be growing. On average, she’s now ahead by about four points in polling averages of the state.
The other two shifts come in the West. As we’ve previously noted, Mormon antipathy to Trump has contributed to making Arizona a battleground state. It’s also why we’re now adding Utah to that list.
Clinton isn’t likely to win Utah — no Democrat has in a presidential race since 1964. But polls indicate that Evan McMullin, a former congressional staff member and CIA operative who is a graduate of Brigham Young University, could win there. If so, he’d be the first third-party candidate to win a state since George Wallace in 1968.
Finally, Trump’s weakness among Republicans has also caused polls to tighten in Texas. We still think the Republican will win there, but we’ve moved the state from solid red to pink, reflecting the reality that even that state is not definite for Trump.
Leave a Reply