Yes, Donald Trump is behind in the polls, and the past two weeks of his campaign have stunk. But look at where we are as the smoke (and there's been a lot of that) clears from the battlefield. Donald Trump is still standing.
Any other conventional candidate would have been destroyed by what he's been through. But the remarkable thing is not the extent to which his support has gone down, the astonishing thing is how rock solid it remains. He has a seemingly unshiftable 37%.
He needs to grow that by 10% to win. Impossible? Not at all.
Remember polling is not exact science. The pollsters take raw data and season it with salt and pepper and spices. Their modelling looks at people who might be under represented, who might not be picked up by telephone or online polling. But many of the people who waited in line to vote for Trump in the Republican primaries were individuals who had been lost to the political process for years - they are probably not part of an opinion pollster's sampling group.
There is also the phenomenon of the 'shy' Trump supporter.
When I was the BBC's Paris Correspondent in 2002, the National Front candidate, Jean Marie Le Pen did far better than anyone expected when he beat the socialist into the final round of voting. It caused an earthquake. What happened? Clearly far more voters supported his tough line on immigration control than they were telling the pollsters.
It was the same in the UK general election in 2015. The polls just didn't pick up how many people were going to vote Conservative. The polls may just be massively understating support for Donald Trump.
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Then there is enthusiasm. All the most enthusiastic supporters are with Trump. There is no fervour for Hillary Clinton.
The polls suggest as many as 15% are undecided. But surely if you're going to vote for the Democratic party candidate, what is there left to know? She is conventional, her positions are well known. Voters have nothing new to learn about her.
Surely the bulk of these undecided voters are hoping to see something in Donald Trump that will allow them to vote for him. A bit of reassurance. A bit of presidential mien. A bit of discipline and focus amid the firecrackers.
Trump has not been destroyed by the slew of sex abuse allegations, the awful tape on the bus, nor the disclosures that he may not have paid federal income tax for the best part of two decades.
But what if something bad emerges about Hillary in the last three weeks of campaigning? The Wikileaks disclosures from the hacked emails have so far been in the mildly embarrassing category. What if there is worse to come? What if the attention suddenly switches to Hillary. She does not have the same Teflon coating that Trump has. There is a profound weariness with conventional politics and business-as-usual. Americans are yearning for change.
Hillary Clinton stands for everything that Americans are sick of. Her supporters are heading to the polls to vote for her with no great enthusiasm. She is there for the taking. And that is why Donald Trump is going to win on 8 November
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37650994