I just wandered over to Sam Wang’s Princeton Election Consortium and found that Wang has posted what I think are his best-ever projections for a likely Clinton victory. If you’re familiar with PEC, you’ll recall that Sam uses states-only polling and rivals Nate Silver in the accuracy of his final results.
Wang sees Hillary as currently having 285 EVs in what he calls “Safe” states. As Sam explains it:
This map provides a state-by-state overview of the current polling. States for which we are currently at least 95% confident in the outcome are considered “safe states” and are colored in the darkest color.
Significantly, Sam sees Florida—where Hillary’s polls have lately been terrific— as a safe state. He also sees enough safe states and states leaning toward Hillary to get her to a likely 341 if the election were happening today. The only true tossup Sam sees is Iowa. Significantly, Trump has just 139 safe EV’s, while Romney seemed locked in with 191 safe EVs all cycle. At least four of Romney’s solid red states are up for potential take-aways for Hillary, including AZ, GA, SC and MO.
Overall, Wang sees Hillary with at 96% win probability using PEC’s Bayesian projection (likely more accurate) or a 94% using their random drift model. Hillary’s Meta-margin is +6.3%, which means Trump would have to improve his state polling by 6.3% to tie Hillary in the state polls.
Hillary’s sharp improvement (she was at 85% in the Bayesian not long ago) reflects an adjustment in the PEC model that assumes greater stability (or less volatility) in the race than his previous model did. It reflects to a lesser degree Hillary’s excellent recent numbers in key state polls. However, the 285 EV projection comes directly from is aggregate of state polling.
Sam also projects a 51 /49 Dem edge in the Senate race, a one seat improvement over when I last looked.
It’s worth going over to Princeton Election Consortium to read the whole thing.