A 10-Foot Poll

Is Trump losing? It’s too early to say.

By James Taranto

(Note: We’ll be on jury duty tomorrow. We hope to be back Thursday, but check back here on atop our Twitter feed for updates.)

With 10 weeks till Election Day, the question on everybody’s mind is: Will Hillary Clinton win by a Lyndon Johnson-size landslide or a Saddam Hussein-size one?

We have a contrarian answer: Maybe not.

True, Mrs. Clinton is ahead in just about every poll, and, as we write, up five points in the Real Clear Politics average. ElectionBettingOdds.com, gives Donald Trump a mere 23% chance of winning—and those numbers are based on actual money bets.

On the other hand, to put that number in perspective: If you roll a pair of dice, the likelihood of throwing a 7—the most common combination—is 1 in 6, or 16.7%. No one would say, “Don’t even bother; there’s no chance you’ll throw a 7.”

The analogy isn’t perfect, of course. Assuming the dice aren’t rigged, the odds are a matter of pure math. An election is imponderably complicated, so that the probabilities are largely a matter of guesswork. But the point stands that there is considerable uncertainty—both known unknowns (the debates) and unknown unknowns (exogenous events). Anything can happen, and it probably will.

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