Here are Donald Trump’s chances in Massachusetts, according to Nate Silver
Plus: How Gary Johnson and Bill Weld's Libertarian ticket is projected to fare.
This may not come as a surprise, but despite winning the state’s Republican primary, Donald Trump’s chances of winning Massachusetts in November are not great.
According to the newly released 2016 general election forecast by FiveThirtyEight, the data journalism website launched by polling guru Nate Silver, the probability of Trump beating presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the Bay State stands at 1 percent.
And that’s just according to an analysis of current election polls.
Taking into account the economic trends and historical data, Trump’s odds in FiveThirtyEight’s “polls-plus” forecast falls to 0.7 percent. And if the election were held today, according to the forecast, Clinton would have a 99.7 percent chance of taking the state’s 11 electoral votes.
Silver’s forecasts, generated through a process of aggregating and weighing polls, garnered acclaim during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, in which he correctly called who would win in 49 states and 50 states in each of the respective contests.
Recent, early general election polls have showed Clinton leading Trump by more than 20 percentage points in Massachusetts, which hasn’t voted for a GOP presidential candidate since 1984.
Expanding out to the national picture, FiveThirtyEight puts Clinton’s chances of winning the general election at 80 percent to Trump’s 20 percent. Those odds tighten slightly (73.8 percent for Clinton to Trump’s 26.2 percent) in the polls-plus forecast.
Based on current polls alone, the site forecasts Clinton to 49 percent of the popular vote to Trump’s 41.8 percent.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson—whose odds FiveThirtyEight puts at less than 0.1 percent—is currently forecasted to receive 8 percent of the popular vote.
Speaking of which, Johnson and his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, are not projected to receive much of a home-turf bump in Weld’s native state of Massachusetts. FiveThirtyEight projects the Libertarians to take 8.8 percent of the popular vote in the state, where Clinton is currently forecasted to win 57.8 percent to Trump’s 31.8 percent.
According to the FiveThirtyEight projections, the Johnson-Weld ticket has a 0.1 percent chance of winning in Massachusetts. On the bright side, that’s only 0.9 percent less than the Republican nominee.
The Libertarian ticket is also forecasted to win 8 to 10 percent of the popular vote through New England, and as much as 15 percent in states including Alaska, Montana, and Johnson’s home state of New Mexico.
Of course, the national general election is not decided by a popular vote (Sorry, Al Gore).
While Johnson’s national projection would be the highest percentage of the vote a third-party presidential candidate has received since Ross Perot in 1996, the Libertarian ticket’s chance of winning at least one electoral vote is just 5.5 percent.
Per FiveThirtyEight’s constantly updating forecast on Thursday, Clinton is projected to win 351.6 electoral votes to Trump’s 185.6 electoral votes. Johnson is currently forecasted to win 0.7 electoral votes.
To win the presidency, a candidate must win 270 votes in the Electoral College.
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