Nate Silver: There's still a 15% chance that Donald Trump could be our next president. That's frightening. A mentally shakey 70 year old bully with his hair dyed a strange color and tiny hands stands that much chance of being the next Commander and Cheif.
A month ago, immediately after the Republican convention, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had about an even chance of getting elected president, according to political analyst Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.
Since then, however, Trump has collapsed in the poll averages and betting markets, and Clinton is now the overwhelming favorite.
The good news for Trump fans is that, in the past week, Trump has bounced off of his lows. The real-estate developer and former reality-television star now has a 15% chance of getting elected, says Silver.
Poll: Clinton opens up 16-point lead in Virginia
By NICK GASS 08/23/16 12:17 PM EDT
Hillary Clinton has blown open a 16-point lead over Donald Trump in Virginia, according to the results of the latest Roanoke College poll of likely voters in the battleground state out Tuesday.
Matched against Trump and the other two major third-party candidates, Clinton earned 48 percent support to the Republican nominee's 32 percent.
Another 8 percent said they would vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson, while Jill Stein of the Green Party took 3 percent, with another 9 percent undecided. In a head-to-head race, Clinton leads Trump by 19 points—55 percent to 36 percent.
Asked whether their backing of either major candidate is more because of their support of either Clinton or Trump or their disdain for the alternative, a plurality of Clinton voters (49 percent for Clinton to 38 percent against Trump) suggested the former, while the reverse held for Trump voters (49 percent against Clinton to 35 percent for Trump).
Likely voters preferred Clinton on all issues asked, including on the economy (50 percent to 43 percent), dealing with terrorism (55 percent to 43 percent), health care (57 percent to 33 percent), improving race relations (66 percent to 21 percent), immigration (56 percent to 36 percent) and foreign policy (64 percent to 28 percent). Clinton held a narrower margin of support over Trump on gun-related issues, with 47 percent preferring her and 43 percent for Trump.
The Roanoke College poll shows Clinton with a larger lead than many other surveys of the state.
Clinton leads Trump by double digits in the POLITICO Battleground States Polling Average for Virginia, 48.8 percent to 37.8 percent, having drawn similar levels of support in other reliable polls conducted over the last month.
Clinton led Trump by 12 points in a comparable Quinnipiac University survey conducted Aug. 9-16, and held an eight-point advantage in a Washington Post poll taken between Aug. 11 and 14. In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey conducted Aug. 4-10, Clinton led by 7 points.
Roanoke College surveyed 803 likely voters between Aug. 7-17, a few days longer than the other recent polls, carrying an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Hillary Clinton, to be the next US President
82% live odds.
Poll: Clinton up big on Trump in Virginia
Hillary Clinton has a big lead over Donald Trump in Virginia, according to a new poll released Tuesday, which shows the Democratic nominee with a 16-point advantage in the state.
The Roanoke College poll found Clinton leading Trump 48% to 32% among likely Virginia voters in a four-way race. Libertarian Gary Johnson gets 8% support, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein is backed by 3%. In a two-way race, Clinton leads Trump 55% to 36%.
That's in line with other recent polling of Virginia conducted over a similar time frame (August 7-17 for the Roanoke poll). A Quinnipiac poll taken within the same stretch found Clinton leading by 12 points, 50%-38%, while Washington Post poll showed Clinton up 51% to 43%.
Clinton performs better with her base than Trump in Virginia, as 91% of Democrats say they will vote for her, compared to 78% of Republicans who say they'll vote for Trump. Clinton's numbers have improved since May, while Trump's have declined over the same period. The former Secretary of State is winning Independents 43% to 25%.
Clinton has also seen her favorable rating increase, though she still remains underwater -- 39% now say they have a favorable opinion of the Democratic nominee, and 45% say they view her unfavorably (up from 35%-50% in May). Trump, on the other hand, has seen his favorable rating remain at 23%, while the percentage of those saying they view him unfavorably grew from 56% in May to 63%.
Additionally, Clinton leads Trump on a range of top election issues according to the poll -- likely Virginia voters give her the edge on the economy, terrorism, health care, and immigration, and she has nearly 40-point advantages on race relations and foreign policy.
The Roanoke poll also surveyed likely voters on Clinton's VP pick, Tim Kaine, who served as governor of Virginia before winning one of the state's U.S. Senate seats. Fifty-two percent said they had a favorable opinion of Kaine, up big from 32% in January -- and well ahead of Trump's VP pick Mike Pence, who has a favorable rating of 24%, while 40% say they don't know enough to have an opinion.
The Roanoke College poll was conducted between August 7 and 17, and sampled 803 likely Virginia voters. It has a margin of error of 3.5 points.
Poll: Clinton leading Trump in critical battlegrounds
Washington Hillary Clinton has opened up commanding leads over Donald Trump in several critical battleground states, including North Carolina and Colorado, according to a new poll Friday.
Clinton leads Trump 46%-32% in Colorado, 44%-39% in Florida, 48%-39% in North Carolina and 46%-33% in Virginia, according to new NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist polls.
The results represent increasing margins for Clinton in each of those four states, compared with polling conducted before the conventions and all the leads are outside each poll's margin of sampling error. The polls also tested four-way match-ups including Gary Johnson and Jill Stein and found that the margin between Clinton and Trump holds when the third party candidates are included.
The polls were conducted between August 4 and this past Wednesday, a particularly bad post-convention stretch for Trump that found him embroiled in a fight with Khan family and making controversial comments about the Second Amendment and Hillary Clinton.
This most recent poll is similar to other surveys that have found Clinton on top in other battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Donald Trump's strange campaign gets stranger
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump is testing just how far he can push his unconventional campaign without wrecking it.
The Republican nominee shattered traditional political boundaries Tuesday when he told The Washington Post he isn't backing House Speaker Paul Ryan or Sen. John McCain as they face primary challenges. The two leading Republicans seemingly angered Trump with their denunciation of his criticism of the family of a slain Muslim US soldier.
Trump's comments -- delivered to a newspaper he's banned from attending his events since mid-June -- capped a bizarre day on the campaign trail that also included asking for a crying baby to be removed from a rally and causing a stir over Purple Heart recipients.
In his interview with the Post, Trump criticized Ryan, saying, "We need very strong leadership."
"We need very, very strong leadership," Trump said. " And I'm just not quite there yet. I'm not quite there yet."
Trump isn't backing Paul Ryan, John McCain
Trump's phrasing -- "I'm not quite there yet" -- echoes comments Ryan made to CNN's Jake Tapper in May when he said he wasn't yet ready to back his party's standard-bearer. Zach Roday, a Ryan campaign spokesman, said the speaker hasn't asked for Trump's endorsement and is "confident in a victory next week regardless."
A source close to Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said he was incredibly upset with Trump for refusing to endorse Ryan in his primary.
This source noted that for Priebus it is "personal" because he and Ryan -- both from Wisconsin -- are as close as family and Priebus was the chairman of Ryan's first congressional race.
"He takes this very personally," said the source, especially since "he has taken on a lot of water" for Trump.
Trump's comments come as he is under the most severe bipartisan fire of his campaign following his criticism of Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son Humayun Khan, died in Iraq in 2004. The Khans delivered one of the most powerful appearances at last week's Democratic National Convention, where Khizr said Trump has "sacrificed nothing and no one."
Trump-world frustrated by their candidate
Trump's response
Trump responded by criticizing Ghazala Khan's silence, suggesting she wasn't allowed to speak because of her religion and saying he made plenty of sacrifices for his business.
The Republican nominee has struggled to recover from the episode as easily as he has from previous controversies. A knowledgeable GOP source told CNN some of Trump's campaign staff -- even campaign chairman Paul Manafort -- are incredibly frustrated with the candidate. Some staffers "feel like they are wasting their time" because Trump has veered off message so much since the Democratic convention.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller rejected suggestions that Manafort is "mailing it in" as "completely erroneous." The campaign "just finished up our strongest month of fundraising to date, we're adding talented and experienced staffers on a daily basis and Mr. Trump's turning out bigger, more enthusiastic crowds than Hillary Clinton ever could."
Still, Trump's challenge became clear in a series of strange moments Tuesday.
At a rally in family-friendly suburban Northern Virginia, Trump reversed the stereotype of baby-kissing politicians when he called for a wailing infant to be ejected -- spurring laughter after initially saying how much he loved babies. He also caused a stir when a military veteran gave Trump a Purple Heart, prompting Trump to say he "always wanted a Purple Heart" and this was "much easier" than serving in combat.
As the rally unfolded, President Barack Obama spoke from the White House, calling Trump "unfit for the presidency."
"The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn't appear to have basic knowledge of critical issues in Europe, the Middle East, in Asia, means that he's woefully unprepared to do this job," Obama said.
In an interview with Washington's WJLA-TV, Trump said it's Obama who is "unfit" for the Oval Office.
"He's a terrible president," Trump said. "He'll probably go down as the worst president in the history of our country. He's been a total disaster."
And as much of the political world looks on in horror, Trump's supporters remain loyal, cheering him on at Tuesday's rally in Ashburn, Virginia.
Alienation from the party
But his alienation from the rest of the party establishment only seemed to grow.
Maria Comella, a longtime aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, told CNN's Jamie Gangel Tuesday she plans to vote for Hillary Clinton, saying Republicans are "at a moment where silence isn't an option."
"Donald Trump has been a demagogue this whole time, preying on people's anxieties with loose information and salacious rhetoric, drumming up fear and hatred of the 'other,'" Comella said.
"Instead of trying anything remotely like unifying the country, we have a nominee who would rather pick fights because he views it as positive news coverage," she said. "It may make him media savvy, but it doesn't make him qualified or ready to be president."
Meg Whitman, the Hewlett Packard chief executive who ran in 2010 for governor of California as a Republican, also said Tuesday she would support Clinton.
In a statement, she blasted Trump's "demagoguery" and said his positions on immigration, the economy and foreign policy "have made it abundantly clear that he lacks both the policy depth and sound judgment required as President."
"It is clear to me that Secretary Clinton's temperament, global experience and commitment to America's bedrock national values make her the far better choice in 2016 for President of the United States," she said. "I urge all Republicans to reject Donald Trump this November."
The New York Times first reported Whitman's decision Tuesday.
The comments follow Sally Bradshaw, a senior Jeb Bush advisor, who told Gangel Monday she had quit the party and would vote for Clinton if Florida was close.
"This is a time when country has to take priority over political parties. Donald Trump cannot be elected president," Bradshaw said.
Meanwhile, New York Rep. Richard Hanna announced he will vote for Clinton in an editorial on Syracuse.com, saying Trump is "deeply flawed in endless ways."
Hanna is not running for re-election so he has less at stake than other Republicans. But he's not the only Republican moving away from Trump.
Top party leaders including Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are feeling the pressure. Though they have criticized Trump's feud with the soldier's family, they have yet to walk back tepid endorsements of Trump.
McCain went further than virtually any of his colleagues in a statement on Monday.
"While our Party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us," McCain said. "I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump's statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates."
But even the Arizona senator, facing a re-election race in which he needs both pro-Trump and anti-Trump voters, did not explicitly call on Republicans to dump their nominee.
That point could yet come, should Clinton's seven-point convention bounce solidify into a sustained polling lead.
During his news conference, Obama expanded on an emerging Democratic strategy to convince die-hard Republicans not to put a cross next to Trump's name in November, even if they vote the rest of the GOP ticket.
'Why are you still endorsing him?'
"If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?" Obama asked. "This isn't a situation where you have an episodic gaffe."
He went on: "There has to be a point in which you say this is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party. ...There has to come a point at which you say enough."
Trump vs. Ryan (again): How we got here
In another example of a scattershot campaign, Trump's son, Eric, was drawn into a discussion about workplace behavior following the resignation of Fox News chief Roger Ailes over sexual harassment allegations.
He told CBS' Charlie Rose that said his sister Ivanka was "strong" and "powerful" and would never allow herself to be sexually harassed by her boss.
The comment drew a one-word tweet from Fox News host Megyn Kelly: "Sigh."
Still despite the gathering chaos around Trump, lingering questions still surround his campaign and those who criticize him.
He is so unorthodox that it is sometimes tough for those caught up in the maelstrom to judge what is happening against a credible political scale. His antics often beg the question of whether Trump has so skewed campaign logic that he has tapped into a connection with voters that normal politicians don't even recognize. That makes it far too early to write him off.
But equally, it's possible America is currently watching the meltdown of the billionaire's campaign. Perhaps the most unorthodox, unpredictable candidate ever has hit limits of political convention that even he can't trump?
American political sages are not alone in trying to figure out the riotous election -- the world is watching too.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was cast in the role of puzzled foreigner as he stood alongside Obama in the White House.
Lee noted that often, after volatile election campaigns, a cooler atmosphere prevails and the ship of state "does not turn completely upside down" and putting his faith in the system of checks and balances.
"It is not so easy to do things, but it is not so easy to completely mess things up," he said.
Donald Trump appears to have donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation
Despite his recent criticism of the Clinton Foundation, Donald Trump apparently donated $100,000 to the organization, according to a 2009 tax document circulated online Tuesday night.
The Clinton Foundation's website also shows a "Donald J. Trump" under a list of individuals and organizations that donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the foundation.
The foundation recently came under fire after Trump accused his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, of running a "pay-to-play scheme" during her time as secretary of state that allegedly awarded donors with special treatment.
Despite Hillary Clinton going on the record and denouncing any accusations of misconduct, Trump has called for an independent investigation into the matter in addition to demanding that the foundation be shut down entirely.
See the itemized list of Trump's charitable
contributions below:
2016 Projected Electoral Votes Updated 8/23/2016
Electoral Votes from Swing States: 112
270 Votes Needed to Win
Donald Trump
154
Hillary Clinton
272
Amherst Democratic News
ACVDN
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