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Trump chilled by cold Election Day reality

When Donald Trump walks on stage here Wednesday, he will be guided by anti-immigration zealots to a more moderate sounding platform, one that represents a pragmatic calculation of his Election Day challenge if not a deeper belief in the unforgiving border policy that won him the Republican nomination.

Polls tighten in presidential race

Donald Trump is gaining some ground on Hillary Clinton in the polls, leaving the Democrat with a smaller lead heading into the crucial month of September.

Clinton opened her largest margin on Aug. 9, when she had a 7.6 percentage point advantage over Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. At the time, she was consistently reaching 50 percent support.

FiveThirtyEight generally takes an inclusive attitude towards polls. Our forecast models include polls from pollsters who use traditional methods, i.e., live interviewers. And we include surveys conducted with less tested techniques, such as interactive voice response (or “robopolls”) and online panels. We don’t treat all polls equally — our models account for the methodological quality and past accuracy of each pollster — but we’ll take all the data we can get.

Here’s a sober­ing sign of the state of our polit­ics: It’s be­com­ing very plaus­ible that Don­ald Trump, des­pite run­ning one of the worst pres­id­en­tial cam­paigns in mod­ern his­tory, could lose the pres­id­en­tial race by the same Elect­or­al Col­lege vote mar­gin as Mitt Rom­ney. A cam­paign that doesn’t be­lieve in tele­vi­sion ads, of­fers in­sults in­stead of policies, and lacks a full-fledged cam­paign staff, could end up per­form­ing nearly as well as a high-char­ac­ter can­did­ate who ran a re­spect­able los­ing cam­paign against Pres­id­ent Obama.

Trump woos women and minorities by pitting one group against another

Immigrants and refugees are taking jobs from black workers. Undocumented criminals prey on American women. Muslims pose a threat to gay men and lesbians.

For Donald Trump, appealing to minority groups and women often amounts to an “us vs. them” proposition — warning one group that it is being threatened or victimized by another, using exaggerated contrasts and a very broad brush.

Polls show tight races in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are tied in Ohio, while Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, leads her GOP rival in Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to new polls that find tight races in three crucial Rust Belt states.

Three Emerson College polls released Monday found that Clinton and Trump each have 43 percent support in Ohio, while she leads him by 5 points in Michigan, 45 percent to 40 percent, and by 3 points in Pennsylvania, 46 to 43 percent.

Hillary Clinton’s national lead over Donald Trump has narrowed slightly to 6 points, according to the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking Poll

Clinton now enjoys 48 percent support, while Trump holds steady with 42 percent. Last week, Clinton led Trump by 8 points. The latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll was conducted online from August 22 through August 28 among registered voters.