It was almost 18 months ago Donald Trump declared his candidacy for the office of President of the United States. There is no timeframe of when Hillary Clinton actually started running for the presidency, but officially it was 21 months ago.
The election is now here and the Hillary camp is all smiles, rock concerts and final nastiness toward her opponent. Trump is alerting the American people this is their last chance to end corruption in Washington, fix our foreign policy, trade agreements and immigration.
Polls rolled in by the hour on Monday, the clear majority showing Clinton with the edge nationally. But does she really? This could be the closest presidential election in decades, if not by electoral votes, but in the popular vote. One makes you president and the other can embarrass a new president looking for that elusive mandate neither of them will achieve.
Clinton held a lead of around 3 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics national average. Her margin had been twice as large in mid-October. Nonetheless, her lead has actually ticked upward from a recent low in the past few days. But if one looks at the Rasmussen poll which predicted the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections the most accurately, Donald Trump will win the White House.
Trump insisted that he was going to win, pointing to his tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters. Hillary has a far more sophisticated “bring out the vote” organization that she installed two years ago.
“The whole psyche will change tomorrow,” Trump said at a Monday rally in Florida. Is that the truth? One thing is odd with all of Hillary’s transparent cheer, she is going back to traditionally blue states in the last days of her campaign and that is a sign of a deeply worried campaign.
Clinton has brought out the Hollywood stars, the rock musicians, Joe Biden, Michelle Obama and her overly-dramatic husband and premiere Trump-hater, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the supposed women’s champion.
Hillary Clinton supporters said terrible things about Donald Trump, over old comments about women, but she associates with degrading gangsta rap culture.
Meanwhile, Trump was discarded by his former primary opponents from Ohio Gov. John Kasich to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The Republican Party treated him like a fatal disease as did Republicans running for congress. From the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan to the last two GOP presidential nominees and all the Bushes, Trump basically stood alone until the end of the campaign when they took a second look and jumped on board big time.
Is it all too late for Trump? Has the country tired of the Clinton dynasty and all that goes with it?
A Trump victory in Michigan would upend the electoral map, suggesting that Clinton could be in real trouble, with demographically comparable states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio also in play.
Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie said on a conference call with reporters, “She’s defending states she thought she had locked up months ago. A late surge of enthusiasm for Donald Trump is forcing her to make an unanticipated last-minute defense of these states, particularly Pennsylvania and Michigan.”
Then there is the other take by Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, who dismissed Trump’s efforts, calling his blue-state strategy a desperate end-of-game ploy with no real muscle behind it. “I think he needed to get those into play much earlier,” Mook said on ABC’s “Good Morning America. I’m not concerned that he’s spending so much time there at the end because he didn’t build a ground game.”
More than 40 million people have voted already, which delights Hillary’s campaign. It shows a spike in Hispanic turnout, particularly in swing states such as Nevada, Florida and North Carolina. Can that supersede the low turnout of African-Americans? Clinton could also benefit from the FBI’s announcement to Congress on Sunday that it has not changed its view on Clinton’s use of a private email server. The FBI earlier this summer said the former secretary of State should not face charges.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC), marveled about besting 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s early-voting numbers in Colorado, Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. Add Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and it’s President Trump.
Just like the late days of the Reagan v Carter election of 1980, election modelers and forecasters have adjusted their forecasts in the final days to show an increased likelihood that Trump will win. Reagan did just that with only one major poll indicating he would win; Rasmussen, who now says Trump will win.
Data analyst Nate Silver’s model gives Trump a 35 percent chance of victory, a finding that has enraged and worried Democrats. However, most forecasts show Clinton winning easily. The final model from the University of Virginia’s Center of Politics gives Clinton 322 electoral votes to 216 for Trump.
It will be a long night for both candidates it looks like. The Midwest states will most likely come into play in the Central Time Zone.
