Trump Needs Game Changer in Final Debate

As Donald Trump approaches Wednesday’s final debate, every projection shows him losing by at least the Romney vs. Obama margin of 4 points in 2012 (5 points in Colorado).

Although Trump’s scorched earth strategy may depress some Democratic turnout, it is hardly drawing more centrist voters to him. In fact, a growing group of business and political leaders and editorial boards that would normally support the Republican nominee are condemning a politics that delegitimizes the democratic process and constitutional principles, such as a peaceful transition of power.

The polling aggregators use some different techniques and mixtures of polls, but mostly the corpus of national polling results is similar – Clinton is ahead by 6 to 8 points.

The forecasters add historical and economic data to help strengthen their projections, but this close to an election polls tend to dominate the algorithms. As the election nears (about 3 weeks), forecasts are converging on a Clinton victory by 80 percent or higher level of certainty.

But this is October and we are still dealing with Russia and its assault on our democracy. So no prediction appears safe. After November 8, of course, we will deal with the next problem, that is the transfer of power.