I have expanded the list of states that might play a role in determining the outcome of the Presidential vote in the fall. For each state in the list below, I have compiled all the available polls at Huffington Post Pollster and calculated the percent of polls in which Clinton held a lead. For each state I then calculated a statistic called “chi-squared” to see whether her lead was sufficiently consistent to conclude she was truly ahead in the state. Here are the results through today:
In Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton has led in every poll conducted in the state dating back to last fall. She has nearly as impressive a lead in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, both states typically mentioned as targets for Donald Trump’s “rust-belt” strategy. In those two states there is less than one chance in twenty that Clinton is truly behind given the number of polls in which she held the lead. In the remaining states the results are still too mixed to draw any conclusions about which candidate is in the lead. Clinton does especially poorly in the traditionally-Republican states of Arizona and Georgia, but there haven’t been enough polls taken to draw any conclusions there. The other states remain toss-ups.