Breathe deeply. The election will be over in 23 da

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Breathe deeply. The election will be over in 23 days. Well, unless there’s a recount.1

Or unless one of the candidates refuses to accept the results of the election, provoking a Constitutional crisis and undermining the norms that have made the United States the world’s leading democracy for the past 240 years or so. Hey, how about those Cubs?

But seriously: Let’s try to gain some perspective by stepping back and asking our collection of 10 questions about where the election stands. (Previous editions of this exercise were conducted on July 15, Aug. 15, Sept. 6 and Sept. 25.)

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1. Who’s ahead in the polls right now?

Hillary Clinton has a significant lead, although there’s some question about the margin. For instance, one major national poll released on Sunday morning, from ABC News and the Washington Post, had Clinton ahead by 4 percentage points.

Another, from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, had Clinton up 11 points instead.

Our forecast model falls in the middle and shows Clinton with a 6- or 7-point lead. That translates to an 86 percent chance for her to win the election according to our polls-only model, and an 83 percent chance per our polls-plus model.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-...eks-to-go/

7. How do the “fundamentals” look?

The economy remains “meh” — that’s a technical term — with solid jobs reports but mixed figures otherwise. And an election between a generic Republican and a generic Democrat would probably be competitive. But as Trump runs an increasingly abnormal campaign and appeals to a narrow slice of the electorate, it’s becoming less likely that he can benefit from those relatively favorable conditions as a conventional Republican might.

One factor helping Clinton: Obama’s approval ratings are about as good as they’ve been all campaign. So while there are lots of undecided voters that don’t like either Clinton or Trump, they often have fairly warm views of the president, which might lead them to prefer Clinton’s continuity to Trump’s change.

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10. What would keep me up late at night if I were Trump?

I’m not sure I can keep up the gag of pretending that Trump has some sort of rational inner monologue. So instead, I’ll think of this question as what would keep me up late at night if I were Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager.

And the answer is that the Trump campaign was never really set up to have a strong finishing kick.

Trump has considerably less cash on hand than Clinton; he also has a much inferior ground game and is burning bridges with Republicans who could help him.

And in the primaries, Trump consistently struggled with late-deciding voters, perhaps because he was such a polarizing candidate. So even if Trump catches a couple of breaks over the final weeks, he might not be poised to take advantage of them.

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