Hillary Clinton prepares to speak at a rally on November 6 in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Getty)
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have both been targeting New Hampshire in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election. Which candidate is most likely to win the state?
The major election forecasts vary when it comes to the exact odds, but every one of them agrees that Hillary Clinton is favored to win New Hampshire. FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s election forecast website, currently projects that Donald Trump has a 35.4 percent chance of winning New Hampshire. This number sounds low, but it’s much higher than Mitt Romney’s odds of winning New Hampshire in 2012. Four years ago, FiveThirtyEight projected that Romney only had a 15.4 percent chance of winning the state. Nate Silver was correct, and Obama ended up taking New Hampshire pretty decisively, beating Mitt Romney by a margin of 5.58 percentage points. (Silver’s forecast, in fact, accurately predicted all 50 states in 2012.)
In the FiveThirtyEight model, Trump’s odds of winning New Hampshire have gone up quite a bit in recent weeks. On October 20th, New Hampshire was essentially considered a lock for Hillary Clinton, and FiveThirtyEight gave Trump just a 12.8 percent chance of victory.
The next election forecast is The New York Times’ The Upshot, and they give Trump lower odds in New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton has a 76 percent chance of winning New Hampshire at this time, with Trump having a 24 percent chance. This is a remarkable change from two weeks ago, when The Upshot only gave Trump a five percent chance in New Hampshire. Since then, a variety of new polls have come out that look quite good for the Republican candidate. Trump’s odds in New Hampshire, however, are much lower than they are in states like Nevada and Florida. The Upshot gives Trump a 48 percent chance of winning Nevada and a 50 percent chance of winning Florida.
The Huffington Post gives Hillary Clinton very good odds in New Hampshire, saying that Trump only has a nine percent chance of taking the state. But that’s to be expected considering The Huffington Post’s model gives Trump the lowest odds of winning the election of any major forecast, as at the moment he only has a 1.6 percent of becoming the next president. They also give Trump an 11 percent chance of winning Florida, an 11.5 percent chance of winning North Carolina, and a 16.9 percent chance of winning Nevada
On PredictWise, Donald Trump’s odds of winning New Hampshire are lower than they are on FiveThirtyEight and The Upshot but higher than they are on The Huffington Post. At the moment, David Rothschild’s prediction website gives Trump a 15 percent chance of winning New Hampshire. Their overall election forecast is that Hillary Clinton has an 89 percent chance of becoming president, while Donald Trump has an 11 percent chance.
DailyKos’ election forecast gives Trump just a four percent chance of winning New Hampshire. This is up from this time last week, when they gave Trump a less than one percent chance. This model also gives Trump a 25 percent chance of winning Florida, a 44 percent chance of winning Nevada, and a 41 percent chance of winning North Carolina.
Finally, the Cook Political Report does not calculate percentages, but they currently have New Hampshire in the “lean Democratic” column. The only two states that they still have listed as tossups are Florida and North Carolina, with Nevada and Pennsylvania leaning Democratic while Ohio and Iowa lean Republican.