WASHINGTON—America’s presidential election is dramatic. It is not close.

There are two weeks of shouting to go, but know this: Hillary Clinton is overwhelmingly likely to win. Donald Trump’s chances are tiny.

“He’s in a lot of trouble, that’s just all there is to it. And they know it,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

Polls suggest that Clinton leads by about six percentage points nationally, a giant margin in modern presidential politics. When Barack Obama crushed John McCain in 2008, he won by seven points.

Clinton had a double-digit lead, unheard-of in America’s modern political climate, in at least four recent national polls. More importantly, she leads in every major swing state.

In Pennsylvania, a state Trump needs to seize to have any chance, the Democratic candidate has prevailed in every poll since July. In Florida, another must-win for her Republican opponent, she has led in 12 of the last 13.

The race is so lopsided that Clinton is at 262 electoral votes, just eight shy of victory, counting only the states where she leads by five or more points. Add the 10 electoral votes of Minnesota, where she leads by four and no Republican has won since 1972, and Clinton is elected even before the votes are counted in Ohio, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Iowa and Arizona.

The momentum is all on Clinton’s side. States where she had trailed narrowly, like Nevada and Ohio, have moved in her direction. Supposed swing states, like Virginia and Colorado, have moved out of Trump’s reach. States where Democrats have long lost handily, like Utah and Texas, have become competitive.

Clinton is even up in Arizona.

“I can’t think of a single state that has clearly moved from a battleground to a Trump advantage,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School Poll.

Trump continues to have a sturdy lead in Iowa and a narrow lead in Ohio. Monday’s news of a hefty ObamaCare price increase may help him. And, of course, some shocking event could occur at any time. But the odds are stronger that he will lose in a landslide than that he will win at all.

Prominent data-crunching websites give Clinton a 97-per-cent chance (Princeton Election Consortium), 92-per-cent chance (New York Times) and 86-per-cent chance (FiveThirtyEight).

In polls that include the two prominent third-party candidates, Trump averages a pitiful 39 per cent. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, was never below 40 per cent in any poll in the last two months.

“It’s quite remarkable,” said Franklin. “Even in recent blowout elections, the losing candidate is typically at or just above 40. So falling to 39 would be beginning to flirt with the level of George McGovern in 1972.”

McGovern won only one state and the District of Columbia. In today’s America, which is more polarized by geography, Trump is certain to win a higher number. But he is doing so badly that Clinton could conceivably do as well in the race to succeed a two-term Democrat as Obama did during an economic crisis under an unpopular two-term Republican.

Trump’s comeback chances are limited by his unusually weak ground-level campaign, which some experts believe will cost him at least one extra percentage point. And polls suggest a majority of voters is not even willing to consider him, saying he is unqualified and lacking in basic decency.

“Every from-the-gut voter marker that you look at, he is doing badly,” Malloy said.

Stuart Stevens, chief strategist on the Romney campaign and a vocal Trump critic, said Trump’s only good option to salvage his standing was to use the debates to express regrets and ask Americans to give him a second look. His favourability rating is so bad, Stevens said, that voters are now unwilling to listen to the case he is attempting to prosecute against Clinton.

Trump has responded to the recent polls with his typical mix of bravado and conspiratorial complaining. “I actually think we’re winning,” he said in a Monday speech soon after alleging on Twitter that polls were “phony.” But he also acknowledged in a radio interview that he is “behind in the polls.”

Trump’s problems are compounded by the fact that voting has already begun in states including Nevada, Florida, North Carolina and Ohio. Clinton’s current lead and superior ground game allow her to bank a significant head start in advance of Nov. 8.

In Nevada, Democrats are far outperforming their 2012 showing. “It’s a very blue wave so far, and Republicans have to be worried,” top local journalist Jon Ralston wrote. In Florida, Politico reported, Republicans have just a 42 per cent to 40 per cent lead in absentee ballots returned so far; at this point in 2012, it was 45 per cent to 40 per cent.

“If the election’s close enough, then the early vote won’t be decisive. But if it’s a lopsided election, then the early vote may be so decisive that it would basically make it impossible for the other party to catch up on election day,” said Michael McDonald, an early-voting expert at the University of Florida.

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