Five Thirty Eight Election Eve Update: Clinton Gains

I will take nothing for granted until I see the election called for Hillary Clinton tonight.  That said, Nate Silver's Five Thirty Eight blog's - which has suffered criticism - last update late yesterday had some positive news for Clinton Supporters.  Here are the highlights:

First things first: Hillary Clinton has a 70 percent chance of winning the election, according to both the FiveThirtyEight polls-only and polls-plusmodels. That’s up from a 65 percent chance on Sunday night, so Clinton has had a good run in the polls in the final days of the campaign. Clinton’s projected margin of victory in the popular vote has increased to 3.5 percent from 2.9 percent.
 We’ll continue to collect polls through early Tuesday morning, at which point we’ll update the model for the last time . . .

As a lot of you noticed, Nevada, North Carolina and Florida flipped from red to blue over the course of Monday. We don’t think that’s a particularly meaningful metric, because the forecasts are probabilistic — Clinton’s chances of winning Florida increased to 54 percent from 48 percent, for instance, which is nontrivial but not an especially large change. Still, we know it’s something a lot of readers follow. It’s unlikely that any further states will flip to Clinton in our final forecast, as she’s too far behind in Ohio, the next-closest state.¹ It’s possible that Florida and North Carolina could flip back to Trump by tomorrow morning, though probably not Nevada, where Clinton’s lead is a bit larger.

Still, the polls clearly agree that Clinton is the favorite, and perhaps has a slight wind at her back for Election Day.