The 5-Minute Fix from The Washington Post

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By Amber Phillips

We know, we know. On Monday, we said Trump is facing electoral disaster. And things still aren't looking good for him.

Take a new poll from Marquette University in the key swing state of Wisconsin: After voters there heard Trump brag in 2005 about forcing himself on women, he saw double-digit drops in every demographic group.

(Philip Bump / The Washington Post)

Nationally, a new poll from the Atlantic and PRRI finds Clinton leading Trump by 11 points. And here's the big news: Women prefer Trump by a mind-boggling 33 points. 33 points! You just don't see those kinds of numbers in presidential politics. (Philip Bump / The Washington Post)

(Philip Bump/The Washington Post)

BUT. Here comes the somewhat-good news for Mr. Trump: The Republican Party doesn't appear to be abandoning him. In fact, some who thought he should go Saturday seem to be back on board come Wednesday. Like Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the Senate's No. 3 Republican, who indicated this week that he'd vote for Trump despite saying this Saturday:

Thune

Let's zoom out some more. USA Today calculated that 26 percent of GOP governors and members of Congress have unendorsed or never endorsed Trump. That means three-quarters of the party is still with him.

Why aren't more Republicans ditching Trump?

Donald Trump on Wednesday in Florida. (Evan Vucci/AP)

1) It's too late to pick another presidential candidate, unless Trump dies, is incapacitated or steps aside himself. ("Never," he told The Post's Bob Costa on that last option.)
2) Vulnerable GOP Senate candidates have been facing backlash from Trump supporters — and Trump himself — for ditching him.

McCain
3) Trump had a stronger-than-expected debate performance Sunday. A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that after the debate, 83 percent of Republican voters said GOP candidates should support Trump. Message received, apparently.

A BUT to our but: This is still a very strange election. There are a notable amount of high-profile Republicans politicians, donors and officials voting Hillary Clinton, albeit none are on the ballot. The Fix's Aaron Blake has painstakingly counted 79 of them, including, possibly, former president George H.W. Bush.

Hillary Clinton's politician problem

MIAMI, FL - OCTOBER 11: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a rally also attended by former Vice President Al Gore at Miami Dade College Kendall Campus on October 11, 2016 in Miami, Fl. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Hillary Clinton in Florida on Tuesday. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

There is not — as of yet — a smoking bomb in the thousands of hacked emails from Hillary Clinton's top advisers that WikiLeaks has been releasing last week and this week. (Also no evidence that Trump allies had a heads-up on what WikiLeaks was doing. But I digress.)

The real problem for Clinton, writes Fix Boss Chris Cillizza, is that the emails detail a calculating politician, someone who's making decisions based on what's best for her political future.

Of course, that's technically the definition of a politician: Appease constituencies you need to get elected and stay elected. But unfortunately for Clinton, a "politician" is the opposite of what voters in 2016 want: "People hate politicians," Cillizza writes. "The more you look and sound like one, the worse they think of you."

Despite WikiLeaks, in a post-Trump-2005-tape-world, the electoral map favors Clinton. In The Fix's latest rankings, there are just a handful of tossup states left for Trump's already narrow path to victory. (Magic number to win the White House in 270.)

MAP

One of those tossup states is Florida. A Trump loss there would probably hand Clinton the White House.

So our partners at Mic.com took a deeper dive into where the battle will be fought, Miami-Dade, and found that it's complicated: A poll in May showed Clinton with two times as much support than Trump, but Miami's large Cuban-American population typically votes Republican. Except there are indications that many have reservations about voting for Trump.

Hang in there. It's almost over.

PollsClose2

As I write this, the end of Election Day is 27 days, 8 hours, 48 minutes and 25 seconds — no wait, 11 seconds — from being over. A month is a long time in politics, but given this whole ordeal started 569 days ago (Ted Cruz was the first to announce candidacy on March 23, 2015), a month doesn't seem that bad, does it?

The Fix's Bump puts it best: "It's as though we had been traveling the 93 million miles to the sun and are now only 3.5 million miles away."

Just 3.5 million miles, people! Which means we're close enough for a countdown clock, one that shows what time polls close in every state. Check it out. And do what I do: Whenever you're feeling sad or mad, pull it up and immediately feel better by watching the seconds tick away until this election is behind us. 27 days, 8 hours, 42 minutes and 33 seconds ...

Psst ... A PSA: Tell your friends in Illinois and Missouri who want to vote for the first time that Wednesday is the deadline to register. If you live in Idaho, New York, North Carolina and Oklahoma and want to vote for the first time there, you've got until Friday. (All state deadlines here.)

(giphy.com)

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