"Yes, of course Donald Trump can win" - article from the WaPo [View all]

Clinton is a uniquely flawed candidate. She has been in the national eye for a very long time and people have largely made up their minds about her. It is very hard for her to change those perceptions. What that means is she has a hard and relatively low vote ceiling; no matter what she says or does (or what Trump says or does) there is a rock-hard group of people who will not vote for her.

In a binary choice election — which is what this is — Trump benefits from the fact that he is simply not Clinton. What's happened to date in the race — pre-GOP convention — is that support has peeled off Clinton but not gone to Trump. Rather, it's moved to "undecided." The GOP convention, as Philip Bump documented here, led to some movement to Trump. Hence the tightening in polls.

What this all means is that the race is close today and there's plenty of reason to believe it will stay like that all the way until the election. For those who say Trump can't win, you probably said he would have never made it this far. All assumptions need to go out the window in an election like this one. Trump seems to understand that.