Trump expects - despite declaring the election to be rigged - to win in a landslide

Washington Post

It has always been possible that Donald Trump could become president, in the abstract sense. There are a slew of reasons that the map and the electorate were stacked against him regardless of his campaign, of course, but the past few months of polling seem mostly to have been about determining the margin of his defeat rather than his odds of winning. For Trump to win, an awful lot would have to go right.

On Wednesday, a lot did.

At the national level, the race has followed a broad pattern: a big lead for Hillary Clinton that narrows to a tie and then balloons back out. To some extent, the question was where in that cycle we’d land Nov. 8 — a giant Clinton blowout or a narrow fight to the finish. Recent national polls have suggested the latter, that on Election Day the race would be close.

That the race is tightening appears to be largely because of wavering Republicans deciding they could back Trump after all.

A narrowing national race means necessarily that the race is tightening in battleground states, too. As of this moment, Clinton leads in four of the 10 closest battleground states and Trump leads in six, according to RealClearPolitics averages. It’s enough, if we apply those averages to the electoral college, to bring Trump within eight electoral votes of Clinton.[...]