Clinton Has An 80 Percent Chance Of Beating Trump, Nate Silver Predicts

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jun 30, 2016 3:55PM

Getty Images / Joshua Lott

Hillary Clinton appears to be headed (as her rival might say) for a yooge win in the November election, according to FiveThirtyEight, the site run by formerly Chicago-based statistician and political forecaster Nate Silver. And the margin of a likely Clinton victory in Illinois is even more gargantuan.

The overall general election polls-only forecast, which was released on Wednesday, shows Clinton with a whopping 80.2 percent chance of winning compared to Trump's 19.7 percent in a polls-only calculation. The model predicts Clinton winning 353 electoral votes compared to Trump's projected 183. The Illinois prediction is also staggering: Clinton holds a 97.1 percent chance of winning the state's 20 electoral votes over Trump's 2.9 percent chance.

Silver rose to semi-stardom in Chicago for his much-loved "burrito bracket" rankings and then rose to national prominence following his largely precise predictions in the 2008 US presidential election.

He took some flack last month for failing to accurately foresee Trump's success in the GOP nomination elections, but his defense is sound.