The 5-Minute Fix from The Washington Post

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By Amber Phillips

You made it, people. Five-hundred and ninety-five days after this long slog of a presidential campaign started in Lynchburg, Va., (where Ted Cruz became the first to declare his candidacy), it's almost over.

And here's how it looks like it may end: Four national polls from four major news organizations have Hillary Clinton winning the presidency Tuesday. But it could be close. Those same polls have her winning the popular vote with somewhere between 3 and 6 points.

The Washington Post-ABC News election eve tracking poll has Clinton leading Trump by 4 points in the popular vote.

Monday The Fix's electoral rankings have Clinton winning too, but not by a lot. Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake calculate Clinton has 275 electoral votes solidly or leaning her way, which means she has more states that could give her a victory.

It's the opposite for Trump. Even if Trump had an amazing night and held all of the states leaning his way, plus wins all three states currently rated as “toss-ups," (Utah, Florida and New Hampshire), he'd still be seven votes shy of the magic number 270.
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But prognosticate as we might, presidential races are complicated things to try to pin down. So let's run down the four factors that could influence who wins Tuesday:

1. President Obama is popular: In fact, he's viewed more positively than Ronald Reagan was at the end of his presidency in 1988.

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That's good news for Clinton, since how people feel about the outgoing president is a solid predictor of which party they'll choose to put in the White House in his place. Only two candidates — Republicans Richard Nixon in 1960, and Gerald Ford in 1976 — have lost the popular vote when their party's president had a positive approval rating.

It's Obama's October surprise.

President Obama kisses a baby Sunday in -- no joke -- Kissimmee, Fla. (Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel via AP)

2. Both 2016 candidates are unpopular: As much as voters like Obama, Clinton and Trump are the most unpopular major-party nominees in Post-ABC polling history.

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Those numbers are so bad that a new Bloomberg poll shows that Mitt Romney would have won this election in a landslide — beating Clinton by 10 points! And we probably don't need to remind Romney supporters of this, but he was not popular enough to win the presidential election four years ago.

Being unpopular is bad news news for both Clinton and Trump, since the more blah Americans feel about their choices, the less likely they are to make time to vote.

3. A third of likely voters have already voted: According to the Associated Press, about 42.5 million people have cast ballots as of Monday afternoon. That's more than a third of everyone who voted in 2012. Here's a cool cartogram of where people are voting early:

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The Hispanic vote in particular is looking strong; in the heavily Hispanic southern Florida county of Miami-Dade, for example, early voting is up by 61 percent since 2012. And that's great news for Clinton. The Post-ABC News poll finds Clinton leads Trump among nonwhites by 77 percent to 15 percent. If the Hispanic vote propels her to win Florida, it could be game over for Trump.

People line up to vote in Miami on Thursday, a sight that brings joy to the Clinton campaign (AFP PHOTO / RHONA WISERHONA WISE)

4. Evan McMullin: He's the third party candidate that — unless you've been paying really close attention to this election — you probably haven't heard of. He's running as a last-minute conservative alternative to Trump, and he's not even on the ballot in all 50 states. In other words, he's not much of a threat to either candidate.

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Except in Utah, to Trump. McMullin is a Utah native and Mormon and is polling surprisingly well there, perhaps well enough to win it. If McMullin can steal this state and its six electoral votes from Trump, it makes Trump's already-narrow path to victory still narrower.

One thing not influencing the election: The FBI renewing a discussion of Hillary Clinton's emails. It looks like anything James Comey did or said didn't change polling much.

What else is on the ballot on Tuesday?

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Americans are also voting on congressional races, gubernatorial races, control of statehouses, gun control, the death penalty, marijuana — a ton of stuff. Here's a rundown of what you should know:

Control of the U.S. Senate is up for grabs, and Democrats are slightly favored to win it after losing it two years ago.
Democrats probably won't back the majority of the House of Representatives, but they could cut Republicans' historically large 246-to-186 majority in half.
Republicans are poised to hold onto a near-record high number governors' seats. But Democrats could claim a major victory by ousting North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who took a ton of heat for signing that bill restricting which public bathrooms transgender people can use.
Democrats could also pick up half a dozen state legislative chambers — in part because they've lost so many over the Obama years, they have nowhere to go but up.

And here are some buzzy ballot initiatives:

Voters in nine states will consider legalizing marijuana for recreational and medical use.
Voters in four states — Maine, Colorado, Arizona and Washington — will consider increasing their state's minimum wage.
Voters in a record three states — Maine, Nevada and California — will consider expanding background checks for guns.
Nebraska voters will decide whether to keep a repeal of the death penalty or reinstate it.
And in Missouri, voters will decide whether to make voter ID laws a state constitutional amendment.

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We'll be covering the election on The Fix all day and night Tuesday, and I'll be in your inbox in the wee hours Wednesday with a special edition of The 5-Minute Fix featuring Cillizza's winners and losers. (At what time, God only knows. But here's a fun tool to try to guess when the election could end.)

A non-election koala getting a belly rub

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