THE BUSINESS INSIDER ELECTORAL PROJECTION: Clinton maintains a huge lead
With less than 20 days remaining in the presidential race, the electoral map is beginning to harden.
And it's looking like a landslide win for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Since last week, seven swing states and one congressional district have shifted from our former projection. But, just one state was added to either Clinton or Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's total.
Using polling data from RealClearPolitics and Washington Post/Survey Monkey, Business Insider found that Clinton, as of this week, would lead Trump by 278-to-181 electoral votes in states that were either safe or likely bets to go in favor of either party's nominee. That alone would give Clinton more than the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the nomination. It's a slight difference from last week's projection, which showed Clinton with a 272-to-181 edge in the same categories.
Business Insider judged that a safe state was anywhere in which a candidate led by at least 8 percentage points, while a likely state was anywhere in which the nominee held a 4- to 8-point lead.
When including states leaning toward a candidate by 2 to 4 points, Clinton held a 322-to-187 advantage over Trump. Last week, Clinton was up 316-to-187 when including this category.
The only state swinging in favor of one of the two candidates that was previously not in their column was Nevada, which shifted from being a tossup to a state Clinton looks likely to win in less than three weeks.
Those tossups, any state in which the major-party nominees held a lead of less than 2 points, consisted of 29 electoral votes. Last week, the three states that were too close to call were Nevada, Ohio, and Arizona. This week, just Arizona and Ohio remain in that category.
The map comes on the heels of a brutal pair of weeks where a leaked tape of Trump from 2005 showed him making crude sexual remarks about women, which was followed by a score of women who came forward to say Trump had made unwanted sexual advances on them.
He has vehemently denied those claims, calling them "fiction."
The Manhattan billionaire is doubling-down on rhetoric that he might not accept the results of the election.
During Wednesday's final presidential debate, Trump was pressed by debate moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News on whether he would honor the election results despite his repeated suggestions recently that the election may be "rigged" against him.
"I will look at it at the time," Trump replied. "I'm not looking at anything now. I'll look at it at the time."
When pressed again, Trump said he would "keep you in suspense" regarding his decision to honor the November results.
On Thursday, he said he'd accept the results of the election "if I win."