Clintons Lead Is Becoming Safer Gary Johnson averaged just 7 percentage points in 11 polls1 released on Thursday, continuing a string of bad results for the Libertarian Party nominee. At the same time, the number of undecided voters appears to be falling. Those two trends are combining to remove some of the uncertainty in our forecasts historically, the number of undecided and third-party voters has been strongly correlated with both polling volatility and polling error. The share of voters not supporting the major-party candidates remains higher than it was at this point in the 2012 campaign, for example, but the more it shrinks, the safer Hillary Clintons lead becomes. Clinton and Donald Trump now combine for a little over 84 percent of the vote. Thats the highest their combined share has been since we started issuing our forecasts in June.2 There hasnt been a huge change, but its meaningful. All this shouldnt be too surprising. Were now only about a month away from the election; more voters are making up their minds. In recent elections, moreover, third-party candidates have tended to fade in the polls as Election Day approaches Johnson and Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, appear to be following the same trend. With more voters committed to one of the two major-party nominees, Trump simply has fewer people he can appeal to in order to make up his current deficit, which makes Clintons lead more secure. A 5-percentage-point lead with about 15 percent of the electorate undecided or voting for a third-party candidate (about where the race currently stands) is far better than a 5-point lead with over 20 percent of the electorate undecided or voting for a third-party candidate (about where the race was in mid-June). Thats part of the reason that Clintons chances of winning the election are in the upper 70s now, while they were in the low 70s back in June. . http://fivethirtyeight.com/features...-lead-is-becoming-safer/?ex_cid=2016-forecast If all holds true to form ..AS Election Day gets closer the support of Johnson and Stein will bleed away with most voting for HRC . .Which should add another 3 pts to her lead
Agreed. And water is wet and the Sun sets in the West. Of course, Clinton's lead is cementing. One would have to be beyond clueless not to recognize that. She has the Electoral College on lockdown. No great revelation there.