Election News

Hillary Clinton won our closely-divided straw poll, with 52.2% saying she won the debate vs. 47.8% for Donald Trump. 9,201 votes were cast (after duplicate submissons were removed) in this non-scientific survey.

When we reported preliminary results Tuesday morning, Trump was leading 50.8% to 49.2%. As we dug into the numbers, we found Trump did much better among those that voted just after the debate, while Clinton got stronger as the hours went along. About 50% of votes were cast between the debate's end and 1AM ET, with Trump winning by about 52-48%. Thereafter, Clinton won by 56-44%. That 8 point swing gave Clinton the four point overall margin.

This is a close election, with a divided electorate, and last night's performance only served to reinforce already made-up minds. That's one way to interpret our closely divided straw poll, which found no clear winner of the first presidential debate.

With over 6,000 votes cast (after removing duplicates), Donald Trump has received 50.8% of the vote, while Hillary Clinton is at 49.2%.

Who won the first presidential debate? Vote in our straw poll. We'll publish results on Tuesday.

Heading into tonight's first presidential debate, signs point to a presidential election that could go either way. Hillary Clinton has an average lead of about 3 points over Donald Trump in the national polls. However, the four most recent polls, out yesterday and today give her a lead of only about 1.5 points.

FiveThirtyEight is forecasting the presidential election with three models.  In each of these approaches, state-level winning probabilities are assigned to the candidates with each update of the forecast.

We've created an electoral map for each model that will update with changes in the FiveThirtyEight state-level probabilities. For example, the 'Polls-only' model as of Sunday morning translated into the map below.

The map below shows states with polls released today. Coloring reflects the survey results. Within five points is shown as toss-up, while a spread of greater than 10 points yields the darkest blue/red. The lighter blue/red is for spreads of 6-10 points.

The map below summarizes the states where polls have been released since Sunday. Coloring reflects the survey results. Within five points is shown as toss-up, while a spread of greater than 10 points yields the darkest blue/red. The lighter blue/red is for spreads of 6-10 points.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. What if nobody reaches that threshhold?

There are two main scenarios where this could occur. Neither is likely at this time, but fun to think about. The first is a 269-269 tie between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The 2nd involves one (or more) third party candidates getting enough electoral votes so that neither Clinton or Trump reach 270.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has invited Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to the first presidential debate scheduled for September 26th at Hofstra University. Likewise, the running mates of the two major party nominees, Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, were invited to the vice-presidential debate at Longwood University on October 4th.

Not invited were Libertarian Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. While both met two of the three main criteria for inclusion, neither was able to come close to the 15% polling threshold set by the Commission. Per the Commission's calculation, Johnson was at 8.4%, Stein 3.2%.

A new Texas Lyceum poll gives Donald Trump a six point lead over Hillary Clinton among likely voters in a head-head match-up. That's pretty much in line with other recent Texas polls. What caught our attention is that among all registered voters, it is Clinton with a four point lead.  That's a 10 point difference.