FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver On Trump's Odds In November

Now that Donald Trump is the formal presidential candidate of the Republican Party, does he actually stand a chance of winning the Presidency in November?

"Absolutely, Donald Trump can win the Presidency," political polling expert Nate Silver told On Point host Tom Ashbrook. "You have two candidates who are very unpopular, you have polls that have tightened."

The exact likelihood, per the latest FiveThirtyEight estimates, is roughly between 35 and 40%.  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims the rest of the odds, but roughly 12% of the vote is "parked" with former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, the Libertarian and Green Party candidates.

"If you take 10% of the vote and give 60% of that to Clinton and 40% to Trump in a state, that's 2% of the electorate and that could put Clinton over the top in a state," FiveThirtyEight senior political writer Harry Enten said in the same On Point interview.

And the most important state in the November election? Florida, naturally.

But Silver and Enten alike stress the shifting nature of polls and the overall meaning of their site's regularly updated figures.

"Any road NFL team wins about 38% of the time," Silver said. "It's a real possibility."