For politics fans, it’s easy to get caught up in fun Electoral College scenarios — ones in which small states make a big difference or in which the House of Representatives has to decide the election. The alternative — endlessly repeating that “Florida is important; Ohio is important” — can get tiresome. That said, Ohio is important, and Florida is super important. 
 
 Florida has a 19 percent chance of providing the decisive vote in the Electoral College according to our polls-only forecast. It’s the most likely “tipping-point state,” in FiveThirtyEight parlance. That’s up from 16 percent just two weeks ago. There’s only one other state with a better than 10 percent chance of casting the decisive electoral vote: Pennsylvania, at 12 percent. 
 
 Florida tends to be a crucial battleground state in presidential elections (more on this in a moment), but it’s become even more pivotal in recent weeks in the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton has improved her position nationally and in Florida, but she’s made a bit more progress in the Sunshine State, moving it closer to the national average. Clinton leads by about 3 percentage points nationally and by about 1 point in Florida. That’s made it more plausible that Clinton could hold onto Florida while losing some light-blue states. 
 
 Let’s say, for example, that on Election Day, Clinton underperforms with white voters without college degrees even more so than she is doing now. Her support would collapse in the Midwest, and her troubles in Maine would likely bleed over into New Hampshire. But Florida is more diverse, with one of the largest groups of Latino voters of any battleground state and a sizable African-American population. So, in this scenario, the nonwhite vote in Florida might allow Clinton to hold onto the state even if she were to lose Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin. 
 
 And that’s a winning map: 
 
 If Clinton wins Florida, Michigan and New Hampshire, she can afford to lose Pennsylvania, where she’s held a lead even as she’s trailed Trump in next-door Ohio. 
 
 Indeed, winning Florida opens up so many electoral paths for Clinton that it’s probably a must-win for Trump. If he loses Florida, Trump wins the presidency only 5 percent of the time according to our polls-only forecast. (Clinton, on the other hand, wins the election 33 percent of the time without a victory in Florida.) Considering that Clinton has led in every post-debate survey in Florida and has a small lead there in our polls-only forecast, you can understand why Clinton is currently a favorite to win the election. 
 
 Florida has two basic things going for it that make it so pivotal. The first, as I mentioned, is how closely the state mirrors the national vote. It’s about 2 or 3 percentage points more Republican-leaning than the country at the moment. Nevada and Wisconsin are about as equally close to the national margin, and the only states closer are Colorado (the current tipping-point state according to our forecasts), New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Considering that the election is a little more than a month away and the inherent error in any forecast, it’s possible that the vote margin in Florida ends up as close or closer as in these other states. 
 
 The other factor that makes Florida important is its large population. None of the states listed in the previous paragraph besides Florida has more than 20 electoral votes. Florida has 29. It’s possible, therefore, for a candidate to lose smaller swing states and make up for those losses by winning in Florida. 
 
 No single state guarantees victory. The notion of a “must-win” state tends to be overplayed — instead, the states tend to move in concert, and the winner of the national popular vote almost always wins in the Electoral College. But Florida is about as close to an all-important state as we’re likely to see. ||||| Whatever arguments we’ve had about the polls this week will soon be swamped by the reaction to Monday’s presidential debate. As a rough guide, I’d expect us to have some initial sense of how the debate has moved the numbers by Thursday or Friday based on quick-turnaround polls, and a clearer one by next Sunday or so, when an array of higher-quality polls will begin to report their post-debate results as well. 
 
 But in the meantime, let’s take one more step back and ask our usual collection of 10 questions about where the presidential race stands. Think of these as time capsules of a sort; you can find previous editions here (July 15), here (Aug. 15) and here (Sept. 6). 
 
 1. Who’s ahead in the polls right now? 
 
 Hillary Clinton, but tenuously. There were some semantic debates on Twitter this morning after ABC News and the Washington Post released their new national poll that showed Clinton 2 points ahead of Donald Trump. Did the Post convey the right impression in describing the race as a “virtual dead heat” in its headline? 
 
 I might have chosen slightly different vocabulary: “Clinton has razor-thin advantage,” or something like that. But it’s basically correct, at least based on the FiveThirtyEight forecast, to characterize the election as both close and competitive. The ABC News/Post poll is typical of recent national polls, which have Clinton up by about 2 points on average. (That average includes some high-quality polls that have Clinton ahead by as many as 6 points, but also a handful of others that show Trump with a lead.) Meanwhile, in the Electoral College, Clinton is leading in the states she needs to win, but only in those states, and not by all that much. Trump is one string of good polls in Pennsylvania or Colorado or New Hampshire away from erasing that advantage. 
 
 To put it another way, a narrow Trump win would not count as a major polling foul-up if the election were held today: It would be within a reasonable range of disagreement among pollsters. A clear Trump win — or for that matter, a Clinton landslide — would be more of a problem for the polls. 
 
 With that said, Clinton is a pretty good bet at even-money. As of Sunday morning, she’s a 58 percent favorite according to both our polls-only and polls-plus models. 
 
 2. What’s the degree of uncertainty? 
 
 It remains fairly high. This is the point that we really can’t emphasize enough, and it’s why FiveThirtyEight shows somewhat better odds for Trump than most other forecast models. Not all 2-point leads are created equal, and Clinton’s is on the less-safe side, certainly as compared with the roughly 2-point lead that President Obama had over Mitt Romney on the eve of the 2012 election. 
 
 Perhaps the most important reason for that is the higher-than-usual number of undecided and third-party voters. Clinton leads Trump roughly 42-40, based on our national polling average; late in the 2012 race, by contrast, Obama led Romney about 48-46. That means about 18 percent of the electorate isn’t yet committed to one of the major-party candidates, as compared with 6 percent late in 2012. The number of undecided and third-party voters has a strong historical correlation with both polling volatility and polling error — and in fact, the polls have been considerably more volatile this year than in 2012. 
 
 We also have a wider playing field of swing states this year — with states ranging from Georgia to Maine having been competitive at various points of the campaign. Thus, there’s a good chance that the polls (and the polling aggregators) will “call” several states wrong instead of getting 48 or 49 or 50 of them right, as they did in 2008 and 2012. That introduces important assumptions about how the errors between states are related. FiveThirtyEight’s model assumes these errors are somewhat correlated, especially in demographically similar states. If Trump beats his polls in Wisconsin, for example, he’s also likely to do so in Michigan. 
 
 Finally, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that we still have a fairly long way to go. With the party conventions held early this year, everyone’s sense of timing was thrown off, and the 44 remaining days in this campaign are going to feel like an eternity. 
 
 It’s important to underscore that this uncertainty cuts in both directions. We give Trump better odds of winning than most other models, but we also assign higher odds to a Clinton landslide. 
 
 3. What’s the short-term trend in the polls? 
 
 In the very short-term — i.e., what the polls look like as compared with a week ago — it’s not clear. Clinton had appeared to be regaining some ground on Trump, but the polls that came in over the weekend were middling for her, including surveys showing just a 1-point Clinton lead in Colorado and a 2-point lead in Pennsylvania. Whether these changes reflect voters reacting to events in the news cycle or are just random fluctuations is hard to say. 
 
 4. What’s the medium-term trend in the polls? 
 
 It’s been toward Trump for a long time now. Clinton’s position peaked on Aug. 8 in the polls-plus model and Aug. 14 in polls-only. Trump has slowly and fairly steadily gained ground since then, closing his deficit by about 1 percentage point a week, to narrow Clinton’s lead from about 8 points in mid-August to 2 points now. 
 
 5. Which states shape up as most important? 
 
 There’s not any one key state, which is part of the reason the election remains uncertain — and exciting. Instead, the various swing states are currently lined up on either side of a gap, with Clinton leading in states representing 272 electoral votes and Trump ahead in states totalling 266 electoral votes. 
 
 If any of the states just to Clinton’s side of the gap slips toward Trump — Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan are the most plausible candidates — he’ll pull ahead in the Electoral College. But conversely, Trump leads by less than 1 percentage point in Florida and by barely more than that in North Carolina and if either of those were to fall to Clinton, his electoral math would become very difficult. The same is theoretically true for Ohio, although Trump’s lead has been more consistent there. 
 
 6. Does one candidate appear to have an overall edge in the Electoral College, relative to his or her position in the popular vote? 
 
 It’s complicated. There could plausibly be an Electoral College-popular vote split in either direction, but our models say that Trump is somewhat more likely to benefit from this. 
 
 Right now, Clinton is ahead by 2.0 percentage points in our national popular vote estimate. She’s also ahead by 2.8 percentage points in Colorado, which is currently the tipping-point state — the state that would give her just enough votes to win the Electoral College. That’s a potential advantage for Clinton, but it requires the polls to be pretty much exactly on the mark. 
 
 By contrast, Clinton’s position overall in swing state polls has not been especially good, in part because they tend to have a high proportion of white working-class voters — Trump’s best group. In particular, she’s gotten some pretty awful numbers in Ohio, Iowa and Nevada lately, and her position in North Carolina seems to be worsening. If instead of treating Colorado as definitely being the tipping-point state, we instead weight the states by their probability of being the tipping-point state, Clinton’s lead over Trump is 1.2 percentage points in the average swing state, less than her national margin and therefore a potential Electoral College disadvantage for her. 
 
 Basically, it’s a question of whether you’d rather have pretty good polling in exactly enough states to win 270 electoral votes, at the cost of pretty bad polling in the swing states overall. Our models say that isn’t a great trade-off for Clinton because having one good path leaves too little room for error. But this calculation is somewhat sensitive to our model’s assumptions. At a minimum, it’s another source of uncertainty. 
 
 7. How do the “fundamentals” look? 
 
 Non-polling factors such as economic conditions suggest that a race between a “generic” Democrat and a “generic” Republican ought to be close. In that sense, it shouldn’t be hard to see how Trump could win. He either becomes normalized enough that he performs about the same as a generic Republican would, or he significantly underperforms a generic Republican but Clinton’s problems are just as bad. 
 
 8. How do FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts compare against prediction markets? 
 
 In general, FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus model has closely tracked betting markets — more closely than any other major forecast (including our own polls-only model). There’s a modest gap between them now. Whereas polls-plus gives Clinton a 58 percent chance and Trump a 42 percent chance, Betfair gives Clinton a 62 percent chance and Trump a 34 percent chance (reserving a 4 percent chance that someone other than Clinton or Trump somehow becomes the next president, a possibility that FiveThirtyEight’s models do not consider). 
 
 For a variety of reasons, ranging from the fact that that gap isn’t all that large to that betting markets can plausibly account for some factors that FiveThirtyEight’s models don’t, I’m not sure about whether I think there’s enough edge there that I’d actually advocate laying money down on Trump. I suppose I wish there were a betting market open only to political journalists and commentators, though. My hard-to-prove sense is that they underrate Trump’s chances as compared with both betting markets and our forecasts. 
 
 9. What would keep me up late at night if I were Clinton? 
 
 You mean, other than the fact that the election keeps getting closer every time I look? 
 
 As I put it in July: “I’d be worried that Americans come to view the race as one between two equally terrible choices, instead of Trump being uniquely unacceptable.” In particular, I’d be worried that my brand has irrevocably been tarnished with a reputation for dishonesty. Between Trump’s knack for exploiting this weakness (“Crooked Hillary”), the news media’s tendency to frame events as contributing to my honesty and trust problems, and some left-over hard feelings from the primaries — Clinton has yet to win over many of the millennials who voted for Bernie Sanders — I’m generally losing when polls ask who the more trustworthy candidate is. 
 
 In the short term, I’d be worried that the talk of Trump’s “low expectations” at the first debate is a tip-off that the media hivemind might frame a debate tie as a Trump win. 
 
 10. What would keep me up late at night if I were Trump? 
 
 Trump’s concerns also aren’t all that different from those he had in July. 
 
 If I were him, I’d be worried that even at my best moments, I’ve never really pulled ahead of Clinton, instead only drawing to within a point or two of her. I wouldn’t be that worried because it’s not clear how predictive those patterns are. But it certainly wouldn’t thrill me, especially given that the debates make for natural turning points and if the pattern holds, the next turning point will be back toward Clinton. I’d continue to be worried about my ground game, or lack thereof. It’s hard to say exactly how much that’s worth, but underperforming my polls by even half a percentage point in the swing states would make my Electoral College path meaningfully harder. ||||| THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: MAP NO. 2 
 
 Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose 
 
 Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and Geoffrey Skelley, Sabato's Crystal Ball 
 
 Some of our readers may recall that the Crystal Ball published its first 2016 Electoral College map at the end of March. It was somewhat controversial — at least judging by many of the reactions we received. As you see below, at that time we projected Hillary Clinton at 347 electoral votes and Donald Trump at 191. While Toss-ups are perfectly reasonable at this stage of the campaign, we decided for clarity’s sake to push every close state one way or the other. 
 
 Map 1: March 31 Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings 
 
 This decisive Clinton edge in the Electoral College came despite the fact that she was still engaged in a tough battle for the nomination (as was Trump back then). We also had no clear picture of the third parties and independents that might play a role in November. 
 
 Now that the primary season is over, the overall picture is clearer: 
 
 1. Both parties have semi-official nominees in Clinton and Trump, even if Bernie Sanders has not yet dropped out and some unhappy Republicans are still toying with a quixotic convention challenge to Trump. Some have argued that prognosticators should allow for the possibility that one or both of Clinton and Trump won’t actually make it to the November ballot — Clinton potentially derailed by an investigation into her use of e-mail while secretary of state, or Trump being unhorsed in Cleveland or otherwise dropping out — but these scenarios are far-fetched. 
 
 2. Potentially significant third-party candidates have jumped into (or failed to qualify for) the race. The Libertarians may be the key “none-of-the-above” entry now that conservative efforts to draft an impressive “real Republican” ticket have fallen flat, and it is not yet clear which party could lose more votes to the Libertarian ticket (Gary Johnson and Bill Weld) as a consequence. 
 
 3. The Green Party, led by presumptive nominee Jill Stein, could take some Sanders voters, although it has yet to score any real breakthrough in the polls, having received a mere 0.36% in 2012. Moreover, Democrats frequently urge one another to be on their guard since they recall Green nominee Ralph Nader drew enough votes in swing states to switch the White House from Al Gore to George W. Bush in 2000. 
 
 4. A big initial Clinton advantage faded after Trump became the presumptive nominee, and a couple of surveys actually showed Trump with a narrow national lead. Lately Clinton has regained her advantage: Both HuffPost Pollster and RealClearPolitics had Clinton up by about six percentage points as of Wednesday afternoon. Trump has not led any national poll since May. With all of these shifts, it’s time to revisit our map. With no drum roll — that’s overly dramatic in mid-June — here is our new and improved Electoral College map: 
 
 Map 2: Updated Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings 
 
 Table 1: Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings changes 
 
 Now you see why we dropped the drum roll. The revised map is anticlimactic — though startling in another sense because it doesn’t show what so many people may have expected. We simply detect no compelling reason to change very much, thus our subtitle, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” 
 
 Our Electoral College totals have not budged: 347 electoral votes Safe, Likely, or Leaning to Clinton and 191 Safe/Likely/Leaning Trump. 
 
 So to us, the state of the general election has not shifted much at all in the nearly three months since we issued our first Clinton-versus-Trump map. Clinton remains a substantial favorite. If this is how the election actually turns out — and it probably won’t, at least not exactly, because there is a long way to go — Clinton would win a victory smaller than Barack Obama’s 2008 win (365 electoral votes) but bigger than his 2012 reelection (332). 
 
 The ratings tweaks 
 
 We are shifting one state a bit toward Trump, although Democrats retain an advantage there. Pennsylvania, potentially the most important state in 2016, moves from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic. Trump is targeting the state, and a number of his more plausible paths to 270 include turning the Keystone State red for the first time since 1988. 
 
 Here’s where we’ll see the success or failure of the Trump appeal to white blue-collar voters (culturally and/or economically). The state as a whole has moved slightly toward the Republicans over the past few cycles. However, we’ve seen much larger average shifts at the county level. Western Pennsylvania has reddened sharply — over the past four cycles, the nine counties with the largest relative movement in the GOP’s direction are located there — while eastern Pennsylvania, particularly near Philadelphia, has trended notably Democratic. But Pennsylvania remains a fairly white state (19th by non-Hispanic white overall), so it’s perhaps unsurprising that early polls there show Trump, who will be very reliant on white voters, has a shot to compete for the state’s 20 electoral votes. 
 
 If Trump’s blue-collar strategy is going to work, the Keystone State is a logical target. But it’s an open question how many more votes a Republican can add to the party’s net tally in areas such as southwestern Pennsylvania, considering the edge the party has there already. In addition, Trump will also have to overcome what should be at least a 400,000-vote Democratic plurality just from Philadelphia County, not to mention challenges in the big, wealthy, well-educated suburban counties that ring the city. Terry Madonna and Michael Young, two keen analysts of Keystone State politics, see a path for Trump, albeit a narrow one. 
 
 Ultimately, for now at least — given Trump’s strategy — we think Pennsylvania should be rated the same as states such as Florida and Ohio, both of which we call Leans Democratic. 
 
 Speaking of those three states, Quinnipiac University polled all of them and found Clinton up eight points in Florida but only tied in the other two. We don’t think this is how the election will ultimately play out. Florida has not voted considerably more Democratic than Ohio and Pennsylvania since the days of the overwhelmingly Democratic Solid South, an electoral alignment that started to break up after World War II. These three states have voted fairly close to the national average in recent years, so if Clinton’s national lead is around six points, that’s probably about what her lead in these states is as well. Trump needs to carry at least two of these three electoral vote-rich states to have a path to victory, and in our view he’s an underdog in all three at the moment. Notably, the Clinton campaign is starting to spend heavily on television advertising in some key states, including Florida and Ohio, although her campaign has yet to spend in Pennsylvania, which Democrats see as a significant reach for Republicans. 
 
 Excepting Pennsylvania, our new ratings changes favor Clinton. 
 
 Currently, we show every Obama 2012 state at least leaning to Clinton, along with North Carolina, the one state won by Mitt Romney where we currently see a Democratic edge. Obama carried North Carolina in 2008 along with Indiana, a traditionally conservative state that has long been the most Republican state in the Midwest. If Clinton’s national lead does grow further, it’s far from impossible that she might be able to carry Indiana, as well as Missouri, which Obama did not carry in either of his elections. But as of now, we think that is unlikely, and Trump remains the favorite in both. 
 
 Two Republican-leaning states where Democratic chances might be better are Arizona and Georgia. Both states typically vote several points more Republican than the nation, but they are both becoming more diverse: Arizona has a growing Hispanic population that will in all likelihood be quite hostile to Trump, an anti-immigration hardliner, while Georgia has a significant and deeply Democratic bloc of African-American voters as well as a growing, educated, white-collar professional class that might be turned off by Trump. While Trump is still a favorite in both places, we see Clinton having the potential to grab one or both if she ends up winning a big national victory, so we’re moving Arizona and Georgia from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. 
 
 Our ratings are premised to a large degree on a belief that we are not going to see dramatic changes in the electoral performance of the states this year. In other words, we think the states that have been the most Democratic in recent elections will continue to be among the most Democratic, the most Republican states will continue to be the most Republican, and the states that have voted closest to the national average in recent elections — the swing states — will continue to reflect the national average. 
 
 Table 2 shows the average two-party presidential performance in each state from 2000-2012. Note that the states that have been consistently the most Democratic in that timeframe all have Safe Democratic designations, while the most Republican states in that timeframe are almost exclusively rated as Safe Republican. Could Clinton win Texas, as she has suggested? Maybe, but only if she is winning nationally in a blowout. The same is true of Trump in California and New York: They only come into play for him if he is rolling up a huge national margin, which at this point is essentially unimaginable. As long as the election is decided by less than 10 points nationally — and we haven’t had a 10+ point margin since Ronald Reagan’s 49-state landslide in 1984 — none of these states should be all that competitive. 
 
 Table 2: Two-party Democratic presidential vote by state, 2000-2012 
 
 Notes: *Indicates states that award some electoral votes by congressional district. The rating listed applies only to the statewide vote. State results are colored by the party that won. The 2000-2012 average column is colored by the results over the four cycles: Blue for four Democratic victories, light blue for three Democratic victories, yellow for a two-two split, light red for three Republican victories, and red for four Republican victories. 
 
 Source: Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections 
 
 However, there is at least one exception: Utah, which has been the most Republican state in the nation over the last four elections. We’re moving it from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. 
 
 Several 2016 polls have shown the state to be competitive. While Utah is very Republican, it also stands apart from other states because of its heavy Mormon population (58% of the state, according to the American Values Atlas), a religious group whose members were notably cool to Trump during the primary season. (Trump only got 14% in the state’s caucus, held on March 22.) Ultimately, Utah seems most unlikely to vote Democratic for president, but Trump could wildly underperform there and bleed votes to Johnson’s Libertarian ticket or perhaps someone else — the independent filing deadline is Aug. 15. The reasons for Trump’s troubles with Mormons are legion, according to BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins, including his apparent hostility to religious freedom (his proposal to at least temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States) and hardline anti-immigration message. Additionally, Coppins argues, “pitchfork populism doesn’t hold the same visceral appeal for a religious community with above-average education levels, relatively stable families, and comfortable middle-class incomes.” Perhaps more important, if Trump does indeed perform poorly with Mormons, it could also hurt him in more competitive states such as Utah’s neighbors (Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada). These are places with above-average Mormon populations where Trump’s potential underperformance with Hispanics may do him further harm. 
 
 The overall picture 
 
 If most of the Sanders vote is gradually re-absorbed into the Democratic column — a reasonable expectation — Clinton will get a boost of a couple percentage points nationally and in swing-state polling. Should the Democratic convention be a harmonious show — not a certainty — and Clinton’s choice for VP be well-received across the party and nation, Clinton’s poll gains should harden. 
 
 The same thing could happen for Trump, of course, but party unity within the Republican family is a non-starter. Two former presidents (both Bushes), the previous party nominee (Romney), and a host of other top GOP officials, donors, and commentators will never get on the Trump bandwagon. News media coverage is bound to stress who does not come to Cleveland, not just who does. It’s also doubtful that senior officials who have been publicly lukewarm about Trump are suddenly going to start singing his praises in or after Cleveland. They know that on any given day, some new or renewed Trump controversy could force them to stand down and backtrack. 
 
 The watchword for much of the party establishment is extreme wariness, although we’re skeptical of a possible coup attempt in Cleveland. As much as many Republicans dislike Trump and fear he will lead to catastrophic losses in the fall, he won the nomination fair and square, and previous attempts to derail the Trump train have failed. If Trump isn’t the nominee, who would it be? The anti-Trump forces have no candidate to rally around, and they almost certainly couldn’t agree on one. Bluntly put, the GOP is stuck with Trump. And a substitute nominee, should one be installed somehow, would be asked to lead a viciously divided party with no real chance of victory. 
 
 Nothing here or anywhere is carved into stone in a most unorthodox presidential year. We recognize that Clinton has loads of weaknesses, too. Personally, she isn’t much liked or trusted. She’s also heavily dependent upon President Obama’s job approval, and thus must fear a reversal of his majority standing. Obama’s ratings could take a nosedive on account of a surprise recession or more domestic terrorism. And as we all know, Clinton might face the email music, courtesy of the FBI at an inopportune time. Scandals and controversies are part of the Clinton tapestry over a quarter-century in national politics. Why would 2016 be any different? 
 
 So while reasonably confident of the direction of the 2016 general election, your Crystal Ball will always wait and watch. We will revise the electoral map again a few weeks after the conventions have adjourned, and as needed throughout the campaign. 
 
 The colors on our map don’t run, but they won’t fully dry either, at least until late on the evening of Election Day, Nov. 8. We can’t rule out a dramatic reassessment, but so far, early in this campaign, one has not been required.
– Another year, another election, and Florida still continues to be one of the most influential states in the Electoral College. Political pundits have paid special attention to this swing state after its unique role in determining the winner of the 2000 election, and the story isn't any different this cycle. Polling and statistics site FiveThirtyEight—which correctly predicted the entire Electoral College map in 2012—estimates Florida is the most likely "tipping point" state for the 2016 election. Currently, Hillary Clinton holds a 1-point lead in Florida. Florida's large allotment of 29 electoral votes means Clinton could afford to lose several other states if she was able to hold on to Florida. Trump, data shows, does not have that luxury. The businessman needs Florida to put together any sort of plausible electoral win—at least according to current polls. Trump has made no secret that he doesn't trust the polls, and according to the AP, neither do his supporters. So at least in Trump-land, there may be more paths to victory that don't include Florida. But for now, experts say Trump and his campaign should be spending a lot of time down South in the sun. Read FiveThirtyEight's full post here.