Hillary Clinton is not just leading in the national polls. Four new polls in battleground states (states some think Republicans could win) show she has only jumped out to a lead in those states -- Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Hampshire.
The new polls give Clinton a 4.4 point lead in Florida, a 13 point lead in Pennsylvania, a 9.4 point lead in Michigan, and a 15 point lead in New Hampshire. This has to be disheartening news for Trump, because he must win in these states (especially Florida and Pennsylvania) to capture the presidency.
The polls are:
New Hampshire -- WBUR / MassINC Poll
Michigan -- Detroit News / WDIV Poll
Pennsylvania -- Franklin & Marshall College Poll
Florida -- Suffolk University Poll
These will not be 'battleground states' come the election -- always presuming that no catastrophe intervenes -- or sudden attack of sanity strikes Republicans. Bernie was always a worse danger to Hillary than Trump ever has been -- though even I didn't expect him to commit seppuku so spectacularly that he would be begging for support for his attack on the Khans, or that he would have insulted Ryan so badly that he's already sending out the 'blank check letters' that even the Dole campaign waited until October to send out.
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Trump, like Bernie, peaked in the primaries, where he collected all the available vtes. (That is the true oddity of this campaign, that instead of producing islands whose base reached down to the solidity of the Earth, both Trump and Bernie produced large, but rootless seas of algae that never were supported by a solid underpinning.
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Trump is losing support so badly and so quickly that the 'cascade effect' is about to happen, where even his supporters desert him or only go through the motions because they already know he is hopeless. Which leads to a descending spiral as more and more states slip out of his reach.
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Right now the true battleground states, states which Trump needs to avoid Hillary having to follow the Monroe precedent and asking one of her electors to vote for Bernie rather than winning unanimously, are Texas, the Dakotas, Alaska. Wyoming, Montana, Mississippi, South Carolina and maybe Tennessee. I doubt if Trump will win even a majority of these states, instead, they are the few places where Trump can keep from being shut out. (If I had to guess, I'd say he'll win South Dakota and Mississippi and two from Mississippi, Montana, and Wyoming. I could see him winning one or two more, but give him time and he'll kick them away.)
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I've never had the slightest worry that Trump could beat Hillary -- barring an unexpected catastrophe like a major attack -- and after his bromance (I hate that word, but it is short and understood) with Putin, maybe only the death of Hillary could make it possible. But I did think it would be close, that Trump would run a competent campaign and that down ballot Republicans would be a help.
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Instead we are seeing a campaign that makes the McGivern campaign a masterpiece of organization by comparison, more attacks on Republicans and 'innocent bystanders' like the Khans than on Hillary, and deliberate antagonism of people he needs to help him keep it close, or even to givern were he somehow to win. (And it would be interesting to contemplate how Ryan would react if, by some weird shift, Johnson won enough EVs to toss it into the House -- and it will be the new house, not the current one that would make the pick. Would Ryan be saying 'support your party' or 'vote your conscience'? Sadly, we'll never know.)
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And yet, Trump has enough support that were he to be dumped -- as is possible, since the RNC can declare a nominee unfit to serve and the questions about the mental health of Trump are already being discussed -- even if there were no violent reaction, the stay homes would elect as many Democratic Congresscritters as would his continued candidacy.
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(And, I have to say, I didn't expect the brilliance and simple sense of the Hillary campaign, and her ability to make a credible appeal to disgusted Republicans without walking back her true Progressivism.