Could Donald Trump still win the election?

Donald Trump has certainly had a rough month. Between his poor debate performances on September 26th and October 9th (and Pence’s inability to provide a decisive win on October 4th’s Vice Presidential Debate), videos of him bragging about sexual assault and predicting he will be dating a young girl in 10 years, and Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers rising despite new WikiLeaks reports coming out against her, Trump can’t seem to catch a break.

Despite the fact some polls (see Rasmussen Reports and LA Times/USC Tracking) have been very kind to Trump relative to others (see NBC/WSJ, NBC/SM, etc.), various analytics-based sites like FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times’ Upshot give Trump a pretty pathetic chance of winning the White House in just under three weeks. By using The Upshot’s interactive time series graph, it is clear to see since Trump’s flop in the first debate and the subsequent, compounding issues he has faced since, his chance of winning (according to them) has steadily declined.

New data has also shown Trump has major unfavorable gaps with Latin and women voters. In 2008 and 2012, both of these groups were given substantial credit for electing Barack Obama, and George Bush received just under a majority of the women vote in 2004, and just about 10 percent lower than Al Gore in 2000, which is nothing compared to Trump’s roughly 30-point deficit among women this year. It would be hard to argue potential voters have still not heard the now infamous recording of Trump in 2005, and as sexual assault allegations pour in, he may continue to plummet in support from women. Latinos also seemed to favor the Republican candidate much more in recent elections, so Trump’s ~50-point deficit should be alarming.

Despite a lack of support from those two major groups, Trump maintains a clear lead in male and evangelical voters, but can they win him the election? Obama definitely did not ride to Inauguration Day on the backs of Bible belt voters in either of the past two elections, and the states in which these voters occupy major demographic territory are already firmly in Trump’s corner, aside from Iowa.

Can Hillary’s lead disappear by the 8th?

In one hypothetical scenario, Clinton could potentially sour the motivations of many of her supporters via a poor debate performance, more hacks and concerns, or just plain apathy on the part of voters in general. Conversely, it appears Donald Trump still has the most to lose in the next few weeks. And if the next three weeks go as poorly as the last three have, his chances of victory are truly minimal. Also, the notion that Clinton supporters will suddenly decide voting against Donald Trump is not something they feel the need to do anymore is very unrealistic and unreasonable. All in all, voter turnout (especially those voting for the two major party candidates specifically) can fairly be expected to be low relative to other recent presidential elections. Additionally, new demographic trends and potential turnout seem to favor Hillary Clinton. 

In another hypothetical scenario, the Clinton campaign could entirely collapse on the elevator up to the top floor, and this collapse could all but ensure a Trump presidency in 2017. How would this happen? Can more leaks actually affect her poll numbers? Can her health resurface as an “issue?” Any answer to these questions would be, of course, hypothetical, but none of them are completely unreasonable questions. Despite the moderate validity of these questions, I assume these problems would have already been a major issue for her, as they have been nagging issues forced into the news by Trump and his surrogates and their effects have been either nil or unsustainable.

So, how can Trump still possibly win? What are his chances?

Not one person in the world can actually provide an objective answer to this question, only the aggregate of United States voters on November 8th. However, it appears that, with only 19 days remaining, many neutral sources of analysis on this election have given Trump only a minimal chance of victory on Election Day (refer back to FiveThirtyEight and Upshot) as well as community-supplied data sources like CNN’s political prediction market, which could be heavily influenced and swayed by any and all voters. Also, as previously mentioned, Trump has alienated a few major sects of the U.S. electorate, and the deficits he has accumulated in polls among these groups have not been seen in recent elections. Republican candidates have been able to stave off these groups in the past (see George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, the latter actually won a majority of women’s votes in 1988 but went down by 13 percent in this category in 1992 when he lost to Bill Clinton) and it frankly does not seem like Donald Trump can provide any sort of mass appeal to reach out to these groups, especially in just 20 days and one debate.

What about the last debate?

Post-debate polls (not from Breitbart and Drudge) clearly indicate a Hillary Clinton victory in the final debate. She was declared the winner by 49 percent of respondents to a YouGov post-debate poll, compared to 39 percent for Trump. She received an even larger margin of the vote in a CNN/ORC poll following the final debate with 52 percent. Actually, funny story: Trump was losing the Breitbart online poll at one point last night. All in all, reactions and polls following all three debates have pretty much all gone in Hillary Clinton’s favor.

As previously mentioned, a continuation of recent trends will not permit a Donald Trump victory. In order to have any realistic chance of pulling off a win on November 8th, Trump will need some luck via continued Clinton scandals or misfortune and/or major gains on positions with the American electorate. With just 19 days remaining until the election, a clear path to victory for Trump is hard to envision. As days continue to roll by and constant news cycles continue to run, his chances grow weaker and weaker.

Unless major polling errors and prediction flops have occurred, Hillary Clinton appears set on the track to the White House.