As polls tighten, electoral map still favors Clinton

After an August of leading in the polls, Hillary Clinton must be hoping summer never ends.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, probably hopes Labor Day will be the real start of the presidential campaign – and the polls will continue to narrow Clinton’s lead until Election Day.

The Democratic presidential candidate built a healthy lead in the polls last month, as a slow drip of news about her private email server and the Clinton Foundation was often overwhelmed by Trump’s comments about “Second Amendment people” and his feud with a Gold Star family.

In recent weeks, the Republican nominee waffled on his signature issue: tougher immigration enforcement. But after a face-to-face meeting with the Mexican president last week, Trump doubled down on his call for mass deportations and a border wall financed by Mexico.

Even as the polls continue to favor Clinton heading into the fall campaign, Trump may be putting his faith elsewhere – in a “silent majority” of overlooked or infrequent voters that pollsters aren’t surveying.

After convention bounce, Clinton coming back to earth

As of Tuesday, Clinton had a 3.3 percentage-point lead over Trump in polls nationally, according to a Real Clear Politics average. Her lead has narrowed by 3.5 percentage points from Aug. 5, a week after the end of the Democratic National Convention. Clinton’s post-convention bounce reached a high of 7.9 points on Aug. 9, but the race has narrowed steadily since then.

A Sunday CNN/ORC poll gave Trump a 1-point national lead, and the L.A. Times/University of Southern California survey has both candidates tied at 44 percent each.

Third parties cut deeper into Clinton’s numbers

As Clinton and Trump struggle with their popularity ratings, third-party candidates are taking a cut, too.

But the addition of Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein in the polls hurts Clinton slightly more than Trump. The addition of Johnson and Stein lowers Clinton’s support to 41.4 percent from 46.2 percent and Trump’s to 39 percent from 42.9 percent.

Electoral map more competitive

The electoral map is shifting out of Clinton’s favor, too. A week after Real Clear projected Clinton had a solid 272 electoral votes – two votes more than she needs to win the election outright – the polling site has moved Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin into the “tossup” category, costing Clinton 43 votes.

Polling at the end of August still gave Clinton healthy leads in both states – by 6 points in Pennsylvania on average, 5 points in the Old Dominion and 5.3 points in the Badger State (4.4 percent in a four-way race).

Elsewhere, Trump may have a challenge in otherwise reliably Republican states. South Carolina is listed as leaning Republican on the map, as are GOP stalwarts Indiana, Texas and Utah.

But no change in the outcome

But when forced to assign all their tossup states, Real Clear’s projections had Clinton maintaining a big advantage with 340 electoral votes to Trump’s 198 – although lower than the 364 the Democrat had previously. The polling outfit assigned Clinton most of the swing states except Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri. Trump kept all of the “pink,” GOP-leaning states.

FiveThirtyEight gave Clinton a 72 percent chance of victory – down from more than 80 percent for most of the period since the conventions. But FiveThirtyEight’s map still says Clinton should pick up a healthy 340 electoral votes.

This story was originally published September 3, 2016 at 5:43 PM with the headline "As polls tighten, electoral map still favors Clinton."