WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump has a 1 in 6 chance of becoming the next president of the United States, according to the latest numbers from The Huffington Post’s poll-eating machine.
The HuffPost forecast model, which aggregates national and state polls, says Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is overwhelmingly likely to win the presidency, with an 83.6 percent chance.
But that means Donald Trump ― a serial liar who launched his political career by questioning President Barack Obama’s U.S. birthplace, a guy who says vaccines cause autism and that Mexican immigrants tend to be rapists ― still has a 16.3 percent chance of winning.
That would make a Trump presidency slightly more likely than the Cubs winning the World Series, according to one estimate, and a great deal more likely than your kids turning out to be geniuses. And of course a Trump White House is vastly more probable than you winning the lottery. Sorry!
For Trump to win the necessary 270 electoral votes, HuffPost’s Natalie Jackson reports, he would need to hang on to his tiny advantage in Ohio, plus he’d need come-from-behind victories in Florida, North Carolina and Nevada. Crazier things have happened.
The HuffPost model gives Trump lower odds than other poll aggregators (such as TheUpshot or FiveThirtyEight) because it excludes historical and economic data and does not adjust polls. The methodology is explained here.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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