Why the presidential race will stay competitive

For all of the recent talk about inevitability, the presidential race is still very much up for grabs. As of Sunday afternoon, the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls shows Hillary Clinton with just 48 percent support in a two-way race (to Donald Trump’s 42 percent). In a four-way race, RCP shows her with 45 percent support (to Trump’s 39 percent). The website FiveThirtyEight’s “polls-plus forecast” gives Clinton an 83 percent chance of winning — so roll a die, and one side comes up Trump.

Moreover, post-debate polls find the candidates running neck-and-neck in Ohio. They find Clinton leading by only 3 points in New Hampshire and 5 points in Colorado. (Clinton is ahead by double-digits, however, in post-debate polling in Michigan.) Rasmussen’s post-debate polling finds Trump up by 2 points, whereas he was down by 5 points in Rasmussen’s (mostly) pre-debate polling. Rasmussen is only rated as a C+ poll by FiveThirtyEight, but the 7-point swing from pre- to post-debate is notable.

If the outcome of the race were truly inevitable, one would expect Clinton to be well into the 50s in the national polls at this point. (When running against John McCain, Barack Obama surpassed 50 percent in the RCP average on October 13 and spent most of the remainder of that race above that mark.) The reason she’s not is partly because of her well-known problems related to integrity, law-abidingness, and likability. But mostly they stem from this simple fact: It’s hard to point to a single political issue that favors her.