WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 (UPI) — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has maintained her lead in the majority swing states and would win the Electoral College handily if the election were held now, according to state-by-state polling data.
According to the UPI/CVoter 50-plus-1 state-by-state analysis released Monday, Clinton holds a lead in all but one state classifed as “swing,” which means a candidate leads by less than 5 percentage points. The one exception is Georgia where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leads by 3.8 percentage points.
If the election were held today, Clinton would win the Electoral College in a landslide, 347 to 191 — the same as last week. It requires 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Clinton now leads in the swing states of Colorado (4.6 percentage points), Florida (2.3), Iowa (1), Nevada (4), New Hampshire (4.4), North Carolina (0.3), Ohio (4.2), Pennsylvania (3.9) and Virginia (4). She has increased her lead in Michigan (7.4), Minnesota (5.2) and Wisconsin (5.6) to the point they are no longer defined as swing states under the 5 percent threshold, though they historically are considered battleground states.
The race was dramatically different two weeks ago. In the first state poll, Trump would have amassed 292 electoral votes and Clinton would get 246. And each candidate led in six of the 12 original battleground states; Georgia initially was not considered a swing state.
The state-by-state data is in accord with Monday’s UPI/CVoter national tracking poll, which showed Clinton leading by 4.69 percentage points.
The poll was conducted between Oct. 9 and 16 among likely voters. The poll is tracking 250 likely voters in each state every week, leading to a state representative sample size of 500 voters. In all, the poll covered about 25,000 samples over two weeks.
Because the poll is conducted online and individuals self-select to participate, a margin of error cannot be calculated. The poll has a credibility interval of 3 percentage points.
