The Slatest

Today’s Trump Apocalypse Watch: A Growing Sense of Sickening Dread

Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to a reporter while stopping for snack food at a Wawa gas station Tuesday in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.  

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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.

Hillary’s still at 70 percent to win in the least optimistic projection. But man alive, just a few days ago that number was around 90, and the hits (i.e., new polls showing a tight race) just keep coming.

Here’s something that happened in Slate Slack today. (Slack is an instant-messaging system.)

First Slate employee: [posts link about Trump lead in North Carolina poll]
Second Slate employee: BE AFRAID
First Slate employee: Post-Comey poll has Trump up 7 in NC. Clinton had been up 3 in same poll three weeks ago.
Second Slate employee: people laugh at me
First Slate employee: Grade A pollster! [Here’s what that refers to.]
Second Slate employee: but BE AFRAID
First Slate employee: GRADE A
Second Slate employee: FEAR is the only useful emotion this week

I agree with both of these Slate employees!

(Hopefully the fear will motivate every non-Trump voter to get to the polls. Still: Fear!!!!!!!!!!!)

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons