Wellllll, here's a little news to make you shit your pants. According to FiveThirtyEight's election forecast, if the election were held today, Donald Trump would win by a lot. He would win 283.8 votes in the electoral college, to Clinton's 253.8. And he wouldn't just win the electoral college: He would also win 45.4 percent of the popular vote to Clinton's 45.1 percent. Below, I desperately grasp for reasons to unshit our pants.

1. FiveThirtyEight has been wrong about Trump before. A year ago, the site stated: "Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another Home Alone movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination." By last December, they were writing articles that began with statements like "I f-ed up a lot in 2015." In May, Silver himself conceded: "We basically got the Republican race wrong." Two weeks later, he explained the site's "big mistake," as he put it: "our early estimates of Trump’s chances weren’t based on a statistical model." But, uhhh, that means FiveThirtyEight has gotten their act together on Trump since then, one might assume. Ugh.

2. The Republicans just had their convention, it was absolutely bananas, and Trump got so much applause it's no wonder he's having a bump right now.


Trump's obsession with how much applause he got (he tweeted the above video) is so fucking weird, and it's inspired the writer Jon Mooallem to tweet endlessly about it much to my satisfaction. Seriously, please click on some of these links. This is just so dumb, there's no way any voter would base their vote on how much applause someone got during a speech, right? Voters aren't that dumb, right? Guys?

Currently winning, if you believe Nate Silver and the other number crunchers at FiveThirtyEight.
Currently winning, if you believe Nate Silver and the other number crunchers at FiveThirtyEight, who accurately predicted the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com

3. The Democratic Convention starts today and Clinton chose Elizabeth Warren as her running mate!!!!! Oh wait, no, only half of that statement is true. Clinton did not choose Warren, who would have excited the hell out of me and a bunch of other people, as her running mate. Bernie Sanders, whom she also did not choose, is speaking tonight, right on the heels of reports, based on a Wikileaks release, that the DNC had it out for him, which may or may not be true but has forced the chair of the DNC to resign. Fuck.

4. Speaking of outgoing DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she's not giving a speech anymore at the convention, but she did address Florida delegates at a breakfast this morning. "And it was a disaster," the New York Times just reported. "Protesters, wearing Sanders T-shirts and buttons, stood and held signs that read 'E-MAILS' and 'We Don’t Want Cheaters In Our Party Anyway' and 'NO!' and 'Division' and 'Thanks for the "Help" Debbie.' They booed, loudly, and screamed..."

5. None of these numbered reasons are turning out like I wanted. Uhhhh, what else do we have? Let's see. Clinton and Kaine were on 60 Minutes last night and they didn't completely screw it up, although it wasn't, like, a home run or anything, either.

Kaine appears to be a qualified, low-key, principled, dependable guy. If you need me, I'll be in the restroom, crying.