Looking at the (Political) Sunny Side

Enough for awhile with accentuating the negative.  Let's look at the sunny side of the street.  (Don't know why I thought of that old tune.)

The NYTimes has an overview that emphasizes Hillary's strength in western and upper southern states formerly red, due to Trump "waking the sleeping giant" of Latinos and other groups.  Dems are "strongly confident" they'll win Colorado, Nevada and Virginia, and believe North Carolina "is likely to break for them as well."

Hillary's rally in Tempe, Arizona attracted 15,000 in a state that has previously gone R.  According to the Times, this was no feint to get the Trump campaign's attention--it's seems enough in reach that there's a big push, with spending behind it on the ground.

The Guardian analysis is similar to most others--Trump needs to run the table of contested red and purple states plus add a big blue one, like PA or Michigan, and he's still behind in both, plus he's currently behind in North Carolina, way behind in VA, only slightly ahead in Georgia, and polls are all over the place on Florida, but he's not at all assured of that.  He also needs Iowa and Ohio, and he needs to keep Arizona.

FiveThirtyEight gives Clinton a 67% chance of being elected.  The NYTimes Upshot puts it at 87%.  The HuffPost model says 98%.

 Nobody sees an electoral college win for the Donald, although Silver is about alone in seeing a path.  Moreover, at least one analyst sees that the 2% undecideds and 9% uncertains split about evenly in their leanings.

A Politico study suggests as well that there aren't a lot of voters who are secretly for Trump but don't say so to pollsters.

The most important remaining factor now, as Politico and others say, is turnout.  The danger of the Comey business was that it would depress Dem turnout.  Early voting has not reflected that.  Even in the past couple of days, its accelerated in North Carolina as more polling places open, notably among black voters.

Early voting, which these guys say is good predictor, continues to favor the Dem.
YouGuv has a polling model which has given much more consistent results than other polls, which they believe is because most of the variation is statistical noise, which they claim turned out to be the case in 2012.  Anyway, they've got Hillary up 3-5 points.

There are some big national polls to come before election day.  There's no telling whether the Reuters/Ipso is an indicator, but it finds Hillary 6 points ahead--after dropping slightly it returned to the same margin as last week, pre-Comey.

And here's the thing.  It is more likely that Dems will have a great night on November 8 than they will have a really bad one.  Despite all the noise, a Hillary landslide with a Senate majority and yes, even the House, is still possible. Maybe less likely than a week ago, but still possible. A lot depends on turnout, and though the Rs are more enthused than they were a week ago, the Clinton campaign has far and away a better plan and better ability to execute that plan to turn out its voters.  And once again, the Obamas.

But the best news for Clinton--the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, for the first time in 108 years. (That's Hillary responding to the Moment, backstage while campaigning in Arizona.)