Yes, there are at least a couple of caveats that should be

Posted on: October 23, 2016 at 22:48:33 CT

in there, assumptions made etc.

One has to do with the veracity of the state polls used by electoralvote.com. Some are more recent than others, others have been tainted with scandal, such as Monmouth.

But I was doing a rough calculation of ... if everything they listed is correct, for Trump to win, at a minimum he would need to win the ones the polls say are leaning his way AND pick up another five or so that they say are leaning to Hillary.

If those polls are accurate and all the other caveats are in place it looks to me like he could win if his numbers moved up evenly across the board by 5%+ or Hillary's moved down by the same amount or some combination of the two equaling that amount.

But that probably wouldn't be necessary... he could theoretically improve his numbers by:

1%+ in Arizona
3%+ in Nevada & North Carolina
4%+ in Florida and
5%+ in Pennsylvania

AND ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL

win the election.

Of course if the numbers are really skewed a few percent one way or the other the numbers here would need to be adjusted. For instance, some think a lot of people are embarrassed to tell pollsters that they would vote for Trump. If that is really true and it was giving Trump 2.5% lower numbers than the reality between now and election day he would in actuality need an increase of:

1% in Nevada & North Carolina
2% in Florida &
3% in Pennsylvania

There are clearly a lot of other factors that come into play or could come into play, for instance:

Are Trump's supporters significantly more likely to actually show up at the polls and vote?

What will the weather be like on election day? Rain, cold, nasty weather, or will we have beautiful weather in the battleground states?

Terrorist events?

Wars break out?

New scandals revealed for either candidate &/or their running mates?

Actual cheating at the polls?

Edited by JeffB at 22:49:16 on 10/23/16