FiveThirtyEight's editor in chief Nate Silver thinks it is too early to start predicting the general election. | Getty Nate Silver: 79 percent chance Clinton wins

Hillary Clinton has a nearly 80 percent chance of winning the White House in November, FiveThirtyEight polling guru Nate Silver predicted Wednesday.

FiveThirtyEight projected Clinton has a 79 percent chance of winning the general election against Donald Trump, who has just a 20 percent chance of succeeding President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.


“Here’s how to think about it: We’re kind of at halftime of the election right now, and she’s taking a seven-point, maybe a 10-point lead into halftime,” Silver told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America.” “There’s a lot of football left to be played, but she’s ahead in almost every poll, every swing state, every national poll.”

Indeed, a Ballotpedia survey of seven swing states released Wednesday shows the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee sweeping Trump in Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia by margins ranging from 4 to 17 percentage points.

Silver, who correctly forecast 49 out of 50 states in 2008 and every state in 2012, noted that both camps “have a lot of room to grow,” but no candidate has blown a lead as large as Clinton’s advantage over Trump in nearly 30 years, when former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis lost to George H.W. Bush despite maintaining a large lead coming out of the spring and summer.

View Nate Silver: 79 percent chance Clinton wins Nate Silver talks about the presidential election on Wednesday.

“It’s been a crazy year, politically,” Silver said, adding that more states, particularly red states, are in play in 2016 than in previous elections. “For example, Arizona looks like a toss-up. Maybe Georgia. Maybe Missouri, North Carolina again.”

“Likewise,” Silver continued, “if Trump gains ground on Clinton then maybe a state like Maine — used to be a swing state, not so recently” — could be in play, too.

Silver also defended his August forecast that gave the billionaire businessman a 2 percent chance to win the GOP nomination.

“That wasn’t based on looking at polls. Trump was always ahead in the polls, and one big lesson of his campaign is don’t try and out-think the polls and try and out-think the American public,” Silver said. “And Trump has never really been ahead of Clinton in the general election campaign. He did a great job of appealing to the 40 percent of the GOP he had to win the election, the primary — a lot different than winning 51 percent of 100 percent.”