This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on September 16, 2016 Polls com­ing out every day make it clear that this pres­id­en­tial race has got­ten very close. Na­tion­al sur­veys put it some­where between a tie and a lead of about 2 points for Hil­lary Clin­ton over Don­ald Trump. This is a far cry from the lead of about 8 points that Clin­ton had last month, al­though that gap was prob­ably un­sus­tain­able. Think about 2008 when John Mc­Cain lost to Barack Obama by a bit less 8 eight per­cent. Mc­Cain car­ried the bur­den of the party in the White House at a time when the coun­try was be­gin­ning to ex­per­i­ence the worst eco­nom­ic down­turn since the Great De­pres­sion. Then-Pres­id­ent Bush had abysmal rat­ings, with the last Gal­lup poll be­fore the elec­tion giv­ing him an ap­prov­al rat­ing of 25 per­cent, the third time that year he had plunged to that depth. On top of that, the Mc­Cain cam­paign had been in roller­coast­er mode for a year and a half and had noth­ing like the or­gan­iz­a­tion that the Obama team had put to­geth­er.

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