Clinton takes a sick day; Trump gets closer

The State newspaper is taking a week-by-week look at the polling and Electoral College projections in the presidential race. Numbers will be updated each week until Election Day on Nov. 8.

What a difference a week makes.

The polls are as close as they have been in weeks after Hillary Clinton gave a speech in which she placed half of Donald Trump’s supporters in a “basket of deplorables,” then took several days off the campaign trail last week after she stumbled out of a Sept. 11 memorial in New York. Her campaign later revealed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia.

The illness kept Democrat Clinton out of the game for much of the week. It also reignited questions about her stamina and her trustworthiness among voters.

The Republican Trump took advantage of Clinton’s absence to lay out his plan for paid maternity leave, discuss his health with TV’s Dr. Oz, and formally end his yearslong flirtation with the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama had been born outside the United States.

Most importantly, Trump’s standing in polls grew.

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Race to the bottom

Larry Sabato, the political prognosticator at the University of Viriginia’s Center for Politics, frames the contest as a race to the bottom.

In what should be a favorable year for Republicans, Trump is underperforming, Sabato writes.

Why? Because he “is neither mainstream nor conducting a campaign that is anything close technologically and financially to the Clinton effort,” Sabato says.

Meanwhile, Clinton’s stumbles are preventing her from blowing out the bombastic billionaire businessman.

“While Donald Trump’s numbers are no better and sometimes worse, Hillary Clinton’s unfavorables are about as bad as we’ve ever seen for a front-runner, with about three in five voters saying she’s not honest and trustworthy,” Sabato writes, adding the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 will be a big chance for Clinton to correct her “tailspin.”

The events of the past week led the judicious Sabato made his first major changes to his electoral projections since March. Iowa, Ohio and Maine’s 2nd District – a combined 25 electoral votes – have moved to the Trump column, while Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Nebraska’s 2nd District, previously for Clinton, are all labeled “toss-ups.”

The change brings Clinton’s electoral majority of 348 votes down to a bare majority of just 272 in Sabato’s projections, while Trump has 215.

Meanwhile, states previously likely to go for Trump – Indiana, Kansas, South Carolina and Utah – have become “safe” territory for Trump, Sabato said.

Polls narrow

Real Clear Politics gives Clinton a bare 0.9 percentage point lead in its national polling average – 44.9 percent to Trump’s 44. That narrows to an even tighter 0.7 percentage-point lead for Clinton if third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are included.

The site’s electoral projections show more losses for Clinton, as she only has 200 assured electoral votes to Trump’s 164.

Just three weeks ago, Real Clear projected an assured electoral majority of 272 for Clinton, enough to win the race outright before toss-ups had been assigned. Since then, six formerly blue states have moved into the toss-up category; Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Two of those states – Colorado and Michigan – moved just in the past week, although Clinton stills holds an average 5.2 percentage point lead in the Mitten State, and Clinton has an average lead of 3.7 percent in Colorado. However, Emerson Polling says Trump has a 4-point Colorado lead, according to its Sept. 13 poll.

Trump, meanwhile, has picked up the previously toss-up state of Missouri – the first time the Republican has gained a state in Real Clear’s projections since May.

Some states move GOP

In the “no toss-up” map, Clinton’s projected winning margin has shrunk to 293, after Real Clear flipped Ohio to the Republican. It’s the fourth straight state Trump has flipped from the Clinton column since the beginning of September, after previously taking Florida, Georgia and Iowa from the Democrat.

However, 293 still is north of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

FiveThirtyEight’s projections give Clinton a 61.1 percent chance of victory – a drop of nearly 30 points from a month earlier. The site adds North Carolina to Trump’s column alongside Florida, Iowa and Ohio and one Maine congressional district. However, even with those losses, FiveThirtyEight projects a Clinton win in the electoral college victory — 278 to 260.

FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus model gives Clinton a slightly narrower – 60 percent – chance of winning. FiveThirtyEight’s now-cast, which projects the results if the election were held today, gives the Democrat slightly better odds – at 60.3 percent – but also gives Trump 53.8 percent odds of carrying Nevada too, cutting Clinton’s lead to a bare majority of 272 – a little too close for comfort for nervous Democrats.

This story was originally published September 18, 2016 at 3:00 PM with the headline "Clinton takes a sick day; Trump gets closer."