FiveThirtyEight’s latest: Clinton has 72% chance of winning

The FiveThirtyEight site has its final prediction up on the site, and it heavily favors Hillary Clinton.

Last updated from final polling about four hours ago, it gives Hillary Clinton a 71.6% chance of winning the presidency, to Donald Trump’s 28.4%. That’s the polls-only forecast.

The “polls-plus” forecast, FiveThirtyEight’s name for the polling averages corrected to historical data that factors in past performance of polls in light of the state of the economy and other factors, pushes Clinton’s chances up slightly, to 72.2%, to Trump’s 27.8%.

That doesn’t mean Clinton will win, of course.

The polls-plus forecast puts Clinton at 302 electoral votes to Trump’s 235. But that’s with Florida, North Carolina and Nevada (50 votes put together) in Clinton’s column even though the margin in all three is very close.

The forecast gives Clinton just a 55.2% chance of winning Florida to Trump’s 44.8% — a knife’s edge in statistical terms. If Florida’s 29 votes go to Trump, the Republican candidate has 264 votes — just four short of the 270 needed to win.

Take North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes, currently teetering on a 55%-45% margin in Clinton’s favor, and FiveThirtyEight’s number-crunching is a sobering reminder for all sides that this election could go either way.