Trump broke Clinton’s hold on the Electoral College

Do you remember this?

Well, since then we’ve had more news about Hillary Clinton’s emails, the latest developments at the Clinton Foundation that caused her ratings to drop seven points in three days, and then she got a little faint in the knees at the 9/11 Memorial because she decided to hide her pneumonia diagnosis from the public. It’s bad. It’s also bad to see the woman who could potentially be the next president of the United States being dragged by security and shoved into a van because of her needy health.

In August, there was talk of Clinton having an Electoral College lock. Now, according to Political.Donald Trump has closed in for the former secretary of state, with the political winds in virtually every swing state blowing in Trump’s favor. That has had a domino effect. The GOP’s fight to hold the Senate has gotten much better, with Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) holding a huge lead in a dual race against Ted Strickland. Ohio was expected to be the GOP’s toughest reelection battle this year. Another candidate who has returned from the dead zone is Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who appears to be pulling away from Gov. Maggie Hassan — a solid Democratic rival.

But getting back to Trump breaking Clinton’s electoral logjam, it doesn’t seem like more voters will necessarily go to Trump, although he has proven more capable of consolidating his base of support, while Clinton is suffering from a slew of adolescent Democrats flocking to the Green Party and libertarians. Still, Trump has some deficits in groups that tend to vote Republican. That’s a problem he should focus on as we approach Election Day, although Clinton’s failure to get adolescent people excited may be a bigger problem in terms of turnout. Trump’s team is ready for war (via Political):

Trump currently leads in Iowa and Ohio — and is tied with Clinton in Florida, where the population holds the most votes, according to POLITICO’s Battleground States polling average.

A slightly more aggressive estimate could add Nevada, North Carolina and one electoral vote in Maine to Trump’s tally: The New York real estate mogul is leading in the latest polls in Nevada and North Carolina, as well as Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

That, plus all the other states Mitt Romney won four years ago, would give Trump 266 electoral votes — just four shy of the 270 needed to win. Clinton’s once-comfortable cushion has been so weakened that if Trump wins those states and Maine’s electoral votes, he’ll need just one state to win — with Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia the most likely targets. And recent polls suggest he’s within striking distance of some of those states.

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Trump also lags among groups more favorable to the Republican Party: he wins support among just 46 percent of white women, including just 40 percent of college-educated white women. (Mitt Romney won about 56 percent of white women in 2012, according to exit polls.)

The Quinnipiac poll found a similar result: Trump won just 19 percent of the vote among nonwhites, 46 percent among white women and 44 percent among white voters with college degrees.

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But Clinton has her challenges. In the Fox News poll, she leads Trump by just 5 percentage points among voters under 35, 38 percent to 33 percent. (In fact, she leads Trump by 4 percentage points among all voters 55 and older.)

While other polls show her still ahead of Trump among younger voters, perhaps most troubling is the number of younger voters who say they plan to support one of the two major independent candidates. A combined 24 percent of voters under 35 in the Fox News poll are choosing either Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

Here’s the latest Fox News election map released today. It looks like we’re headed toward a map that looks similar to the 2004 election. I know Fox News considers New Mexico a solidly Democratic state, even though the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll had Trump leading there by five points over Clinton. A lot can change in a month.

Here Reuters Agency: