The following article is cross-posted from DCorps:

On the eve of the first major presidential debate, the latest likely voter survey of the battleground states on behalf of Women’s Voices. Women Vote Action Fund shows Hillary Clinton settled into a strong lead in Pennsylvania, a modest one in North Carolina, and essentially tied in Ohio and Nevada.[1] Her overall margin has narrowed from where we had it across the battleground in June. Nothing comes easily in this election year, but the Clinton margin should grow from the structure of the race revealed in this analysis. In the two-person ballot, her margin grows 2-points to a 5-point lead across these states and she takes the lead in Nevada. And if the 3rd party candidates weaken, as is normal, Clinton disproportionately benefits.

The structure of the race

This survey shows why the presidential race in the battleground has tightened, but also why it is likely to widen back up. Trump’s better margins come from some consolidation of base Republicans and Clinton has lost support to 3^rd party candidates in the wake of the campaign’s travails. Trump continues to earn overwhelming and intense support with white working class men who are making themselves the backbone of the Republican presidential coalition. Over three-quarters of white non-college men say the country is on the wrong track, making them the most pessimistic voters in the country. An equal number are casting a ballot for Trump, as they make disappointment known.  But as we shall see, even extraordinary turnout from these voters cannot tip the Clinton states to Trump.

Clinton still wins the Electoral College majority, however, because of her stable support with parts of the Rising American Electorate and her inroads with other swing groups. The unmarried woman and minorities at the heart of the RAE are voting for Clinton in force. Three-quarters of minorities are voting for Clinton in these battleground states, she is getting 62 percent with unmarried women and is even winning the majority of white unmarried women (52 Clinton to 31 percent for Trump). Right now, unmarried women are showing respectable levels of voter engagement. In this poll, unmarried women and Democrats fall just 2-3 points below Republicans in saying this election matters tremendously.

But Clinton is also over-performing with college graduates, suburban voters and the white working class women who are put off by Trump.  That is a big part of the story.

Donald Trump’s vote, on the other hand, is driven primarily by the white working class men who are voting for him 63 to 18. They are making their discontent known by pulling away from Clinton and making themselves the backbone of the Republican presidential coalition; they are 30 percent of the Trump vote.

But in this new America, they would have to increase their share of the vote from 16 to 25 percent in North Carolina, 15 to 17 percent in Nevada, and 20 to 31 percent in Pennsylvania, all else being equal, to put Trump ahead in those states.

Incomplete partisan consolidation

The incomplete consolidation of Democratic partisans for Clinton and the weak consolidation of Clinton voters for Senate and House candidates are the main reason Democrats down-ballot are falling short of their potential at this point. Clinton is getting 87 percent of Democrats, short of the 92 percent Obama had in these states in 2012. She only gets 77 percent of Obama voters and 78 percent of those who approve of Obama.

Clinton will likely benefit disproportionately if the race becomes more polarized. In the two-way ballot she gets 93 percent of Democratic voters. So, she clearly has the potential to drive up her margin with partisans.

Trump does not have such an opportunity. He currently gets 82 percent of Republicans, certainly up from our earlier surveys. However, his vote in the two-way ballot leaves him at just 86 percent of the vote in the GOP base. There are 14 percent in the Republican Party who just won’t vote for him. Those holdouts are concentrated among the moderate Republicans[2] where he is getting only 60 percent of the vote. One-quarter are voting for a 3^rd party candidate (22 percent for Johnson) and 10 percent are casting ballots for Clinton. Furthermore, there is a halo effect for Clinton, who enjoys a 57 percent recall among Democratic primary voters, but not for Trump among Republicans. He is topped out within his base.

Potential Democratic consolidation creates this campaign’s target groups

The starting target is the 18 percent of the Democratic voters who are holding back from Hillary Clinton. These target Democrats are change voters: three-quarters say the country is on the wrong path. Well over 60 percent have unfavorable views of both Clinton and Trump, though they feel very positively about President Obama.

Millennials are at the center of the story. They comprise nearly four-in-ten of these unconsolidated Democrats. They form a parallel story to the disaffected white men. They want change, and 61 percent say this country is off on the wrong track. They are in an anti-establishment mood, and one-third of millennials are now not voting for a major party candidate. Clinton is only getting 40 percent of the millennial vote in a 4-way ballot. She is particularly struggling with the white millennials where she is running even with Trump – 33 Clinton to 32 Trump, with 28 percent voting for 3^rd party candidates.

Consolidating Democrats and winning races 

The incomplete consolidation of the Democratic Party at the top of the ballot is exaggerated down-ballot, and that creates a huge opportunity. That will also impact what messages can really move the vote. Only 62 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaning independents are voting for the Democratic Senate candidate. That means that there is a big bloc of 15 percent of the electorate in these states who are voting for Clinton but not Democrats in these key federal races.

Clinton widening her lead and winning states and Democrats making gains in the Senate and House depends on the right strategy and messages for reaching these voters. We tested one on GOP extremism, one linking Republican candidates to Trump and one offering a positive Democratic economic message.

Democrats, millennials and Democratic target voters are desperate to hear where the Democratic candidates want to lead the country. The message that consolidates Democrats more than any other tested in this survey is one that offers a clear positive economic agenda.  It says that Democrats have a plan for the economy, and that to get these things done, we need a Democratic majority in Congress.

A big majority of 61 percent found this to be a convincing reason to vote for the Democratic candidate for Senate, 29 percent said it was very convincing. But it was particularly well-received by the groups we are trying to consolidate. Over half of them said it was a very convincing reason to vote for the Democratic candidates.

An attack on Republican candidates for Trump as their party’s nominee is not as successful. It gets a strong response, but it is weakened by the fact that a plurality of voters think the GOP is divided and many candidates in his own party do not support him. Also, it simply does not lead to people consolidating their vote behind Democrats.

But it is clear that the greatest gains down-ballot, and at the top of the ticket, come when voters hear the Democrats offer a positive vision for where they will take the country and how they will change an economy that only enriches the few. It puts them on the side of change and a better future.

Conclusion

The race has tightened but Hillary Clinton is leading in the presidential battleground due to her strong support from unmarried women, minorities, and swing groups turned off by Donald Trump. There is still room for the Democrats to consolidate, however, both at the top of the ticket and down-ballot. Democratic targets for consolidation are eager to hear more about what Democratic candidates will do if elected. A message that argues for a Democrat majority to execute a progressive economic agenda moves unconsolidated Democrats to vote for their party candidate, both at the top of the ticket and down-ballot.

The Clinton campaign has a new ad that should be shared with all swing voters:

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:

1. We must put a lot more money in the closing weeks into Latino media, both Spanish- and English-speaking. Even more importantly, we need to invest far more than we have so far in Latino field operations for voter registration and GOTV. We are not yet maximizing our vote with this crucial constituency, and we have relied too much on the dislike of Trump among Latinos to drive GOTV. We need boots on the ground, and we need to give people a reason to vote for Hillary, not just against Trump. This, as you will see, is a repeated theme of mine.

2. We must invest a lot more money and attention into social media. Despite the big fundraising edge that Clinton has had over Trump, the Trump campaign has spent more on social media. He spent at least $19 million on social media in July and August alone. Hillary’s lagging poll numbers among young people are due in part to the fact that we are not paying as much attention to the media platforms they use as Trump has been.

3. We must get all the Bernie voters we can get. Admittedly, there are some Bernie bros who will reject Bernie’s plea, and almost every other progressive leader’s plea, to vote for Hillary. But there are still plenty of Bernie people who are genuinely torn. Only a tiny percentage of them will vote for Trump. Most are still deciding between Stein, Gary Johnson, Hillary, and not voting at all.

We need to make a sustained, positive, heartfelt series of pitches to them, to convince them that Hillary will get some good things done. Yes, we need to remind them that Trump will do the horrible things he has said he would do, but mostly we need to inspire and motivate them. Hillary Clinton has embraced a large number of progressive economic and social issues that Bernie voters care a lot about, like free college for most people and doing something big about climate change, and we need to make that case to the Bernie folks.

4. What all of these strategies have in common is the simple idea that we must make a much stronger case about voting for Hillary, not just voting against Trump. A campaign that is all negative with no positives will drive down voter turnout, so that only the people who always vote end up voting, giving us a Republican electorate. Check out 2010 and 2014 to see that electoral dynamic — the people who always vote are older, whiter, and better off than Democratic base groups. Disliking a candidate is rarely enough to get people off their butts and into the voting booth.

Could younger voters actually prevent Clinton from winning the election? Ronald Brownstein addresses the possibility at The Atlantic:

Clinton struggled among Millennial voters in her 2008 primary campaign, her 2016 primary campaign, and in the 2016 general election. Against Donald Trump, Clinton has two big advantages—a policy agenda that polls show largely matches Millennials’ own preferences, and an opponent even more unpopular with them than with the public overall. But she also must overcome her own long history of failing to connect with this growing group of voters—a failure that is increasingly worrying Democrats as the overall race tightens.

“This could very easily be the difference between winning the election or not,” said Andrew Baumann, a Democratic pollster who is regularly polling Millennials during this campaign. “If she ends up with them at 50 percent [of the vote] or 55 percent or 60 percent, those are hugely different scenarios.”

In simplest terms, Clinton’s problem is that large numbers of Millennials have never warmed to her as a national candidate.

Brownstein shares figures showing Clinton’s deficit with Millennial voters vs. Obama in 2008 and against Sanders during this campaign’s primary season, in which Sanders bested her in 25 of 27 primary and caucus states. Brownstein notes that Clinton leads Trump in polls so far, but “show her failing to consolidate the enormous share of Millennials who express unfavorable views about Trump. Instead, many of those voters now say they will support libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party nominee Jill Stein.” Brownstein shares some poll results:

 A survey of Millennials in 11 battleground states released last week by Baumann’s firm, the Global Strategy Group, for Project New America and NextGen Climate presents the same daunting contrast for Clinton. In that survey, 75 percent of Millennials say they view Trump unfavorably, 73 percent describe him as a “racist,” and 70 percent say he is “unfit to protect our country from major threats.” But among likely voters, this survey again found Clinton drawing 48 percent, to Trump’s 23 percent, 13 percent for Johnson, and 8 percent for Stein.

Brownstein notes that there has been some improvement in Clinton’s poll numbers with younger voters since July. Clinton’s deficit with Millenial voters is apparently not about policy. Clinton supports all of the right policies favored by younger voters, but “Big majorities of Millennials, the polls show, view her as untrustworthy, calculating, and unprincipled.”

It can be argued that young voter turnout rates have not been all that impressive. But close margins in key swing states could make them a pivotal constituency.

As the numbers noted above make clear, it’s not that Millennials prefer Trump: it’s more that too many of them are, at this late date, considering casting their ballots for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson. Clearly Democrats have work to do to improve Clinton’s credibility and image, but also to educate these voters about Johnson’s right-wing economic policies, which couldn’t be much more detrimental to their interests and prospects.

The following article by managing editor of the blog Working-Class Perspectives John Russo, former co-director of the Center for Working-Class Studies and coordinator of the Labor Studies Program at Youngstown State University and visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and Working Poor at Georgetown University and Georgetown University Professor Sherry Linkon, faculty affiliate of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, and editor of Working-Class Perspectives, is cross-posted from Moyers & Company:

When Mitt Romney dismissed the 47 percent of voters who, he predicted, would support Barack Obama “no matter what” as “victims” who depend on government assistance, liberal critics called foul. The quote, caught on video by a bartender at a Florida fundraiser in September 2012, reinforced Romney’s image as an elitist whose interests were firmly aligned with the wealthy. Not surprisingly, Democrats repeatedly used the line against Romney, and while we can’t blame his defeat in that year’s election on that one line, it sure didn’t help, especially in Rust Belt states like Ohio.

Last Friday, Hillary Clinton said the following:

You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of these folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket – and I know this because I see friends from all over America here – I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas – as well as, you know, New York and California–but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Read more…

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:

Yeah, okay, this hasn’t been the Clinton campaign’s best weekend ever. The media and the Trump campaign both have reasons to play the ‘basket of deplorables’ quote and the health issue up, so of course we will hear a lot of overheated talk about how horrible all this is for Hillary. The simple fact, though, is that neither a quote that needed a little tweaking (if she had said “some” of Trump supporters rather than “half,” the quote would not have been news), nor the news about walking pneumonia is going to change the fundamental dynamics of this race.

When Hillary performs well in the first debate on September 26th, all the health talk goes away — just ask the veterans of the Mondale and Reagan campaigns about good debate performances putting such questions to bed. If Trump wants to get into a discussion about the quote in that debate, it will just give Hillary a chance to pivot and talk about all the nasty racists who are part of his campaign. I guarantee she will not be playing defense on that topic.

So I’m not worried about this irritating weekend. What I am worried about is that Democrats will take off their eyes off the ball and forget the fundamentals of this election, which just aren’t that complicated and aren’t about the gaffe du jour. The 2016 election is about whether Democrats seize the day and get Democratic voters excited about this election. The Rising American Electorate (RAE), a term coined by pollster Stan Greenberg, consists of growing demographic segments within the American voting population: people of color, unmarried women, and young people. All of these groups will strongly support Hillary and other Democrats at the polls. The RAE is now over 55% of eligible voters. If we get them motivated and inspired to vote with a strongly progressive populist message, we will not only win big percentages of their votes, but win more than enough white working class voters as well.

The numbers are clear on this point. As just one example, the Washington Post‘s most recent poll gives Hillary Clinton a modest five point lead over Trump, but if Democratic voters turn out in equal numbers to Republican voters, the lead rises to 10%. Greenberg, who also coined the term ‘Reagan Democrats’ in the 1980s and has studied white working class voters for most of his career, points out, the white working class that is Donald Trump’s base is only 18% of the likely electorate this year. That’s half of what it was in the Reagan years. And we can get some of those voters with the same message that appeals to the RAE.

If Hillary and other Democrats focus the election on the economic narrative of leveling the playing field — the same economic narrative Hillary and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have all focused on over this election — we will win this election, and win it big. If we talk about creating good, new jobs through rebuilding roads and highways and investing in solar and wind power; if we talk about paid family leave and affordable child care; if we talk about raising the minimum wage; if we talk about holding Wall Street accountable; if we talk about free college for low- and middle-income students; if we talk about getting the drug companies to lower their outrageous price increases; if we talk about not letting big money control our politics anymore; in other words, if we talk about the Democratic platform Hillary and the entire party have already endorsed and campaigned on, we will win this election.

There just aren’t that many swing voters in the presidential election left in an America where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are people and brands people have known a whole lot about for a very long time. But there are two kinds of voters Democrats need to be worried about: people who would be voting for us yet might not vote due to a lack of enthusiasm, and people who would never vote for Trump and thus are Hillary voters. These likely Hillary voters are not necessarily sold on other Democrats down ballot in races they may not be paying much attention to yet. There are millions of voters in both categories, and rather than worrying about voters who might suddenly decide to vote for Trump because Hillary has a touch of walking pneumonia, we need to focus on making our case to those two crucial sets of voters.

Because of Trump’s historic weakness as a presidential candidate, but even more because of demographics and because this kind of economic agenda and narrative produces a strong majority in the polling, this can be a Democratic wave year of historic proportions. But we can still blow this huge opportunity. Democrats are spending way too much time worrying about Reagan Democrats when the guy who coined the term thinks we need to be focused on messaging to and turning out people of color, unmarried women, and young people. We need to stop worrying about voters we will never get, and we need to stop fretting about the little day-to-day stories that will take care of themselves.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson is trying to anchor his candidacy with appeals to two constituencies in particular: anti-Trump Republicans and young voters, who are attracted to Libertarian advocacy of personal freedoms like gay mnarriage and legalization of marijuana.

There is not much that can be done to dissuade Republicans who prefer Johnson to Clinton. But Democrats should try to better educate young voters, who may not be aware of Johnson’s often extreme “free market” views, and his opposition to environmental regulations, as well as his unbridled advocacy of corporate exemption from taxes and regulations.

In a normal political year, Libertarian candidates provide an inconsequential footnote and draw a little more from Republican candidates’ support than from Democrats. This year, however, the situation is a little different, mostly because of the GOP’s relentless hammering of Hillary Clinton, which has reduced her “trustworthy” numbers in polls. Never mind that their case for “distrust” of Clinton is extremeely thin; it’s the repetition that counts, and that’s their only hope.

Gary Johnson will likely be on the ballot in all 50 states, while Green Party nominee Jill Stein’s name will appear on ballots in less than half of the states. You would expect that Stein would draw more support from Democrats, but it’s unclear how much, since many of her supporters would probably not vote for the Democratic nominee in any circumstances.

At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver writes that “The majority of pollsters (12) have Clinton’s margin over Trump shrinking when at least one third-party candidate is included. The difference in margins, however, varies among pollsters, and a few, such as Ipsos, have Clinton’s lead rising by the tiniest of bits when at least Johnson is included. Overall, including third-party candidates takes about 1 percentage point away from Clinton’s margin, on average.”

Johnson’s average support in polls must be 15 percent in order for him to be admitted into the upcomming televised presidential debates, where he could conceivably increase his support figures.

But Tessa Stuart’s “Why You Shouldn’t Vote for Gary Johnson” at Rolling Stone unmasks the former Repubican’s economic and environmental agendas, and surprise, surprise, Johnson pretty much backs the same policies as the likes of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump on core bread & butter and environmental issues. Some examples from Stuart’s post:

Johnson has a poor fiscal track record, only the faintest fidelity to Libertarian ideals and a facile grip on issues both foreign and domestic – helping explain why 99.1 percent of the electorate decided he shouldn’t be president four years ago…

“I would not believe that colleges or universities should be free,” he [Johnson] told  ProCon.org in June. “They would be too expensive from a federal standpoint. If states want to do that of course, that’s their prerogative. But should they be free? No, they shouldn’t be free.”

Johnson says corporations should give as much money as they want, as often as they choose, to whomever they please. “I think it [Citizens United] comes under the First Amendment, that they should be able to contribute as much money as they want,” he told The New American in 2012. (He reiterated that sentiment this year.)

While Johnson admits fracking is an incredibly inefficient and environmentally destructive form of energy extraction, he thinks we ought to be doing more of it. “I have spoken to my former environmental secretary,” he tells ProCon.org, “and what he says regarding fracking is that it’s only 10% effective, that there are environmental concerns, and that he believes that more research needs to be done on fracking. Number one, it could become much more effective, meaning it could have a much higher yield. So it sounds very pragmatic to me, but that would be where I’m at.”

“My understanding is that it is more free trade than not…But I could not tell you what the specifics are…So I would be in support of TPP.” (All three of his rivals – Clinton, Trump and Jill Stein – are against the deal.)

Speaking of details, when Johnson last publicly discussed the Keystone XL, in 2012, he also didn’t have a firm grasp on those pertaining to the pipeline – a project later spiked by the Obama administration, and which Trump has vowed to revive. Nevertheless, he said he would support it. “I completely support the Keystone Pipeline if it’s not an issue of the government implementing eminent domain to procure right of ways… I really don’t understand where the regulatory hurdles are… I would certainly remove the regulatory hurdles,” he said.

“I accept the fact that there is global warming and I accept the fact that it’s man caused. That said, I am opposed to cap and trade. I’m a free market guy when it comes to the clean environment the number-one factor when it comes to the clean environment is a good economy.”

“Minimum wage, look, I think [everyone is] missing the boat. Why doesn’t he raise it to $75 an hour? Well, of course he can’t raise it to $75 an hour because then prices would go way up and nobody would be able to afford to hire anybody. ‘Oh, I see $75 is too high but $10.10 is just the right number?’ How do you arrive at that? Why not let the marketplace arrive at that? And I just think it’s much to do – minimum wage is much to do about nothing. I mean, nobody works for minimum wage [anyway]… [Just] showing up on time and wearing clean clothes gets you way above the minimum wage.”

“I would do everything I could to repeal President Obama’s health care plan. I think that very simply we can’t afford it,” Johnson said. “The long-term solution to health care is a free market approach to health care…Regarding paid medical and family leave, “I would be opposed to that,” Johnson told ProCon.org earlier this year.

Johnson says he’s a fiscal conservative, but, as the National Review points out, when he was elected governor of New Mexico, “Johnson inherited a debt of $1.8 billion and left a debt of $4.6 billion.”

In addition to his Republican views on economic and environmental policies, Johnson still supports zero gun safety measures, despite all of the horrific massacres of innocent people, including children, in recent years. “I don’t believe there should be any restrictions when it comes to firearms. None,” he said to Slate in 2011.

Libertarians have gotten pretty skilled in crafting their pitch to young voters with vague noises about “freedom” as a general social goal. But they try to avoid too much conversation about their economic and environmental views when selling their candidates to young voters because they know that their views on these issues are nearly identical to those of GOP candidates.

As one friend puts it, “A Libertarian is just a Republican who believes you should be able to kiss whoever you like and smoke whatever you want.”

The centerpiece of the GOP’s campaign to discredit Hillary Clinton is a couple of manufactured “scandals” being peddled by Judicial Watch and other Hillary-hate groups, writes Michael Tomasky at The Daily Beast. Some of the more gullible media outlets have fallen for it, branding Clinton with a standard they have never applied to Republicans. It has had an effect, as Tomasky explains,

Until recently, most experienced political observers agreed that Democrats winning back a majority in the House of Representatives on November 8th would be a long shot, even considering Trump’s abysmal poll numbers. At Vox, however, political reporter Jeff Stein reports that some commentators now see a path that could give Dems majority control:

Geoffrey Skelley, who closely tracks congressional races at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, suggests there’s a crude shorthand for evaluating the battle for the House: Look to see if Clinton can beat Trump by 6 points or more in the presidential race. If that happens, Skelley projects 50 seats would be in play.

..By most projections, Democrats look more likely to get closer to 15 or 20 seats, not the 30 they’d need. Many states have gerrymandered safe Republican seats that would require an extraordinary landslide to do the trick. In 2012, for instance, Democratic House candidates won 1.7 million more votes than their Republican foes — and still ended up with 33 fewer members of the House. This is why even many Democrats believe taking the House is unlikely.

But unlikely doesn’t mean impossible. Here’s the math behind how Democrats’ long-shot dream might just become a reality.

Get a district to vote for your party’s presidential nominee and your party will also probably win its House seat.

That’s not an ironclad rule, but it’s a pretty good indicator — in 2012, only 6 percent of districts that voted for Barack Obama voted a Republican into the House.

This is the key to understanding why Skelley thinks a 6-point Clinton win could put the House in play. That kind of national victory would likely mean 50 House districts currently controlled by Republicans would vote for Clinton — therefore suggesting they have a good shot of also going blue at the House level.

Of course, a Clinton win in these 50 districts wouldn’t guarantee House Democrats will pick up all of those seats. (Many are held by powerful or longstanding Republican incumbents who are well-funded and enjoy good reputations at home.) But it does mean that Democrats could lose 40 percent of the House races in districts won by Clinton and still take back control of the House.

And here’s the interesting thing: The polling suggests this is not only a possibility but exactly what’s projected to happen. Averages of all the major polling firms compiled by both RealClearPolitics and the Huffington Post currently put Clinton’s lead right around the 6-point mark.

Stein argues that a 4-point Clinton victory probably wouldn’t do it. That would replicate Obama’s last margin of victory, which only netted 28 seats, two short of what Dems would need to reclaim the Speaker’s gavel this year. A 5-point margin favoring Clinton might do it, according to Skelley’s calculations, but a 6-point lead should give Dems realistic reason to hope for a House majority.

Stein also cites Sam Wang’s calculation that, with just two exceptions since 1946, Democrats have always won back the House when they’ve won the “two-party vote” (voting that excludes third parties). “If the election were held today,” says Wang, “House Democratic candidates would win the popular vote by 5 to 8 percent..Judging from the last few cycles, that level of public opinion appears to be right on the edge of being enough to give Democrats control of the House.”

Before Dems get too optimistic, Stein notes that the Cook Political Report projects that “the party is only on track to nab an additional 16 seats and argues that only 33 seats are vulnerable at this time. Further, adds Stein, Alan Abramowitz’s calculations indicate Dems have about a 15 percent chance of retaking the House majority.

So we have a fairly wide range of informed opinions based on data among some of the smartest political observers about the possibilities for winning back a Democratic majority of the House this year. That’s a lot better than what we were looking at a year ago.