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The Trump Apocalypse Watch is a subjective daily estimate, using a scale of one to four horsemen, of how likely it is that Donald Trump will be elected president, thus triggering an apocalypse in which we all die.
As someone who has more than once voted for a losing candidate in a presidential election, I can tell you that the impulse to believe that your candidate is going to win is a strong one. I can also tell you that Republicans, as a whole, do not currently share this impulse. From Reuters:
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday and conducted from Oct. 20 to Oct. 24 found that 41 percent of Republicans expected Clinton to win the Nov. 8 election, versus 40 percent who picked Trump.
That reflected a sharp decline in confidence from last month, when 58 percent of Republicans said they thought their party’s nominee would win, versus 23 percent who expected Clinton to prevail.
That is not the sign of a robust campaign! On the other hand, Nate Silver notes that FiveThirtyEight’s projections gave the San Antonio Spurs the same chance of beating the Golden State Warriors last night as FiveThirtyEight’s projections give Trump of winning the election. The Spurs won that game by 29 points, which is enough to singlehandedly panic me into raising our danger level to one horseman.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
