Politics: Reuters latest media dinosaur to admit Trump is gaining

I think the narrative that Trump can't possibly win is officially dead and buried. Reuters is the latest liberal media dinosaur that's now admitting the race has tightened to the point where no one can confidently predict the outcome on Tuesday night:

It is unclear if the FBI inquiry upset the balance in the race. But many national polls have found the race tightening in recent days. Polling averages last week showed Clinton with a lead of between 4 and 7 points. Those averages now show her lead at just 2 to 3 points. Last week, the project had her leading 47 percent to 40 percent. This week, it dropped to 45 percent to 42 percent.

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Clinton’s success is built on holding together those blocs of voters. She does not, for example, enjoy the same support among African-Americans as Obama, the first black U.S. president. Diminished support among blacks, coupled with a large drop in black turnout, would hurt the Democrat. If black Democratic turnout drops by 15 points nationally, for example, Clinton’s odds of winning drop to about 72 percent, by a projected margin of just 32 Electoral College votes. A drop of 20 points would reduce the odds of a Clinton victory to little more than a coin toss, according to the project.

Now if you're a Hillary supporter, you might not think much of a drop in her probability of winning from 95 percent to 90 percent. You might even laugh at people like me for finding any encouragement from it. But here's the real reason Hillary should be worried: Over the past week, just about every trend has been in Trump's direction, and because we're so close to the day of actual voting it's very difficult to get a sense from the polling averages what the mood of the electorate will be on Tuesday. Remember, tracking polls measure the rolling average of several days to try to tell you what's happening in the minds of voters. That's a useful moderating feature in the sense that it doesn't give you an exaggerated picture because of one day that might be an outlier. But where a tracking poll might fail to give you the complete picture is in a situation where things really are changing quickly and dramatically.

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The news the past few days about the Clinton Foundation investigation has been nothing short of disastrous, which is why the MSM seem very reluctant to cover it. Yet it seems people are hearing about it anyway, and just about every new poll that's taken after new Hillary news has broken is showing further movement toward Trump. Now, you might argue, sure, but the polls historically don't move as far in four days as Trump would need them to in order for him to win. And that's true. But the election isn't decided by a poll. It's decided by people voting, and that's not the same thing as answering a question from a pollster. The people who show up on Tuesday will have had time to really think and digest everything, and the decision they make that day will be final. There's no taking it back. My sense of it is that, if Trump wins, it won't be by a nose. And he won't just barely pick off a blue state here or there to eek across the finish line with 271 electoral votes or something like that. If he wins, I think he'll take all the red states and a wave states that are often called battleground states but typically go blue - like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. That would be because the news about Hillary and her corruption is deemed so troubling by independent voters that they decide en masse that, contrary to what the media have been trying to tell them, Hillary is not the safe, steady hand at the wheel. Quite the contrary, she is the far riskier choice because she is so compromised by her lies and corruption - and despite people's misgivings about Trump, they will not be willing to put that kind of power in the hands of someone as clearly untrustworthy as Hillary. The problem with Trump is that he often behaves in ways that make you wonder if he is fit for the job. The problem with Hillary is that she constantly behaves in ways that confirm she is not fit for the job. The electorate seems to be quickly realizing this, and rethinking the presumptions they'd been making about both candidates up until now. I'm not predicting that Trump wins at all, let alone that he wins in the manner I described above. What I'm saying is that if he wins, I think that's how it would have to happen. It would be a matter of the current polls showing the movement in his direction, but not really being able to show just how dramatically it's happening - if only because there isn't time for them to do so.

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