By The Hill, Dec. 19, 2016
Electoral College members across the nation voted to affirm President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Monday, as liberal attempts to sway Republican electors to abandon Trump fizzled. Republican electors stayed loyal to their candidate, keeping Trump well above the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to secure the nomination.
Texas' 36 electoral votes for Trump pushed him over the edge at around 4:30 Central Time, even though two rogue electors' defections deprived Trump of one of those votes. That gave Trump 304 total electoral votes.
The Republican-controlled Congress, a body even more unlikely to be swayed by pressure than the Electoral College, will certify the vote on Jan. 6.
More: www.thehill.com
By Nate Silver, Sept. 1, 2016, FiveThirtyEight
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The race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has tightened. Clinton, whose lead over Trump exceeded 8 percentage points at her peak following the Democratic convention, is ahead by 4 or 5 percentage points today, according to our polls-only forecast.
The tighter margins in the polls, which reflect a loss of support for Clinton along with a modest improvement for Trump, have come gradually over the past few weeks. The evidence of a tightening has become more widespread, however, and it’s particularly clear in polls that surveyed the race just after the conventions and are retaking its temperature now. Fox News’s national poll, for instance, had Clinton up by 9 points just after the conventions (in the version of the poll that included third-party candidates) and has her up by 2 points now.
There isn’t any guarantee that Trump will continue to gain ground. Over the course of the year, polls have oscillated between showing a dead heat at Trump’s best moments and a lead of 8 to 10 percentage points for Clinton at her peaks. We’re about halfway between those goal posts now. It’s plausible that the recent shift reflects Clinton’s convention bounce wearing off...
