The 2016 election is in its final stretch, and Hillary Clinton has good reason to start planning her first term.
With just 29 days left until Election Day, the Democratic nominee leads Donald Trump, her Republican rival, by an average of 4.5 points nationally. But that’s not the number that truly maters—for that, we look to the states.
According to Real Clear Politics’ electoral map, Clinton holds leads in enough states to secure 260 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win on Nov. 8.
A quick look at the math shows that Clinton needs to hold all of the states currently in her column while winning just one of the six toss-up states with 10 or more electoral votes, based on the Real Clear Politics metrics.
The RCP map is relatively conservative compared to other analyses. The Associated Press, for example, gives Minnesota (10 electoral votes) and two of Maine’s four electoral votes to Clinton, pushing her over the 270-vote threshold.
CNN currently predicts the same 272 electoral votes as the AP.
And FiveThirtyEight’s “polls-plus” election forecast, which incorporates additional data above polling, gives Clinton the highest electoral vote count of them all—313 to Trump’s 224—while putting most of the swing states in Clinton’s coffers.
The most conservative forecast model we could locate comes from Princeton University’s Electoral Consortium, which gives more states to Clinton but only considers 250 of the electoral votes truly “safe” for the former secretary of state. Still, this analysis puts her chances of victory higher than the other predictions—91 percent, at a minimum.
Of course, this is 2016 we’re talking about. Nothing is set in stone until all the ballots are in. And even then, we may be in for a wild ride.
