Hillary had BETTER win Iowa. I'm going to be so embarrassed for my state if she doesn't.
It's pretty much guaranteed that Trump wins it. Not just based on the polling, but Iowas has infamously been the one state this year that didn't really bend to the national trends. In other words, bad shit for Trump suddenly meant states like Georgia were temporarily in play while Iowa remained pretty solid. I think the first in the nation status has a lot to do with that...they can get accustomed to the candidates being there all the time and then latch on to one depending on what their mood was...both Obama's victories there and now Trump's lead kind of defy where you would have expected that state to go based on its demographics.
FIveThirtyEight's model must be pretty confident in whomever is leading in a given state. Trump's odds of winning New Hampshire are basically identical to his odds of winning the entire thing. Kind of strange because the entire boat sinks, currently, if one of Nevada or Florida or North Carolina don't go his way and all three are practically coin flips.
It seems to me, if you are Trump, the only play left is to go at New Hampshire
hard. In fact, if I were his campaign manager, I'd only have him hang out there, for the most part, over the remainder of this campaign. He either wins New Hampshire and the election or he doesn't. It's a small state, so you don't have to convince too many to vote for you, etc. There is absolutely no reason Trump should set foot in Colorado, Michigan or Wisconsin for the rest of this thing. New Hampshire is far, far more likely to budge.
I would've gone with this same strategy in 2004 in retrospect. Kerry should have just hung out in Ohio the entire time and rolled the dice. Yeah, maybe it would have fucked him in another state or whatever, but without Ohio he was toast.