title:  Nate Silver Has A Frightening Prediction For The 2016 Election
text: If sane Americans have done one stupid thing over the last year, it s not take Donald Trump seriously. Unfortunately, there s a lot of discontent among the right toward the changing face of the United States and on the left, there s discontent over the fact that the United States isn t changing fast enough, and that discontentment could easily land Donald Trump in the White House, according to FiveThirtyEight s statistical guru, Nate Silver.While the polls are in a virtual tie, a breakdown of electoral college votes paints a much bleaker picture. According to Silver, Trump is ahead of Clinton by a whopping 15 points.Silver s  now-cast,  updated with fresh surveys on Monday, shows Trump s current likelihood of winning at 57.5 percent, compared with Clinton s 42.5 percent. In the 11 battleground states, Colorado, Virginia and Michigan would go to Clinton, while Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa would go to Trump.The breakdown shifts a bit between the Electoral College and the popular vote. Silver s model currently predicts the popular vote going 45.4 percent to Trump vs. 45.1 percent to Clinton, but the Electoral College giving Trump a wider margin of victory, 285 votes and Clinton 252.6.Source: PoliticoThis warning alone should be enough to wake up some who are on the fence and some Bernie Sanders supporters, but not all is lost. Silver notes that polling during conventions is notoriously inaccurate.On the one hand, the conventions are not a particularly good time to sweat every tick in the polls. Instead, they tend to be one of the less accurate times for polling. Historically, it s unusual for candidates not to at least pull into a rough tie after their party convention   John McCain and Sarah Palin did so in 2008, for example, and even Walter Mondale led a couple of polls in 1984. But those bounces do not always turn out to be predictive.Silver has another hand, though, and he s saying that Clinton has had a very bad July. She could get a convention bump this week, but with Wikileaks  email dump and Sanders supporters protesting every single speaker, it s doubtful. In other words, be afraid, but vote and drive people to the polls if necessary.Featured image via Slaven Vlasic at Getty Images. 