Biden is favored to win the election

Thursday marked the final presidential debate, and the question now is will the race tighten? President Trump is simply running out of time to mount a comeback and Joe Biden has a hefty lead in national and state polls. We’re now in the home stretch before Election Day, and we’re way past the point where a normal polling error could let Trump close the gap. Still, he has a meaningful chance per our forecast — a little worse than the chances of rolling a 1 on a six-sided die and a little better than the chances that it’s raining in downtown Los Angeles. And remember, it does rain there. (Downtown L.A. has about 36 rainy days per year, or about a 1-in-10 shot of a rainy day.)

• Want to test out our forecast and see what happens if Trump wins Florida or Biden wins Texas? Well, now you can! We’ve built an interactive forecast that lets you explore the ways Trump or Biden could win the election. But there are limits. (Yes, we’ve seen the Fivey memes.) If Biden or Trump has less than a 1.5 percent chance of winning a state, you can’t select that candidate, as ultimately we’re hoping you’ll use this tool to explore some very plausible scenarios. That’s certainly how we plan to use it in the lead-up to the election — and beyond if it’s not clear who the winner is on election night.
• The last two weeks of the campaign can be an incredibly stressful time, so editor-in-chief Nate Silver offers eight tips to stay sane, including paying attention to polling averages (not individual polls) and not putting too much stock in how either campaign “feels” (they usually do not have a better read on the race than the polls).