Here’s what we know: Hillary Clinton is leading in the race for president, and she’s made meaningful gains since last week’s presidential debate. Clinton is currently a 72 percent favorite in our polls-only forecast, up from 55 percent just before the debate. That corresponds to a roughly 4-percentage-point national lead for Clinton, about where the race was as of Labor Day — before a series of mishaps for her in mid-September. Our polls-plus model, which blends polls with an economic index and generally produces a more conservative forecast, has Clinton with a 69 percent chance instead.
But don’t take our model’s word for it: Take a look at the polls for yourself. In the chart below, I’ve shown every swing state poll taken from the start of Clinton’s “bad weekend” on Sept. 10, through Sept. 25, the day before the debate — a rough stretch of polling for her. I’ve also shown every swing state poll taken since the debate was completed. Exceptions: There are a couple of polls that straddle the period before and after the debate; I don’t include these. I also don’t include state-level results from the 50-state tracking polls conducted by Ipsos, Google Consumer Surveys and CVoter. Our model uses this data, but they aren’t quite the same as regular state polls and so it assigns them a lower weight.
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