Hillary never had an 8 point lead...
Trump has always had a structural lead of 4-5 points on the low end.
And his lead will stretch well beyond that as time goes on, and most of the never trumpers and other republicans come home now that they have worked through their grief, and as he begins to lead consistently more of those who plan on voting for him but unwilling to admit it will start to admit it as well.
The polls claiming Hillary had 8 points are laughable... the polls claiming she’s polling up at near or over 50% nationally are equally laughable.
Hillary has a structural max in the low 40s.. 42-43% on her best day!
The only way she can get over that is if Trump’s supporters suddenly abandoned him and decided to stay home.. hillary wouldn’t get one more vote, but her percentage would go up only because fewer folks showed up to vote.
The odds of that happening? Next to nil.
Hillary can’t get 60M voters to show up and vote for her on her best best best day... Meanwhile, in spite of having poor enthusiasm in 08 and 12, Republicans can put up 61M votes with a boring candidate all day long... Trump will likely bring 64-68 M votes on election day, possibly more.
The fundamentals of this race haven’t changed since day one.. Trump basically had a week or two of wasting energy on the Kahn and other nonsense, right out of the conventions... basically a stumble, and he quickly recognized and fixed, put everything back on course.. and Hillary stupidly bought into her own narrative and thought she could play wait out the clock.
Trump is starting to see the inflection that was always going to happen in the polls as republicans come home, and home as he wins, those who have been hesitant to admit they will vote for him will start to admit what they have been going to do all along... and the more it becomes obvious he’s winning the more will admit they are planning to vote for him... and his lead will grow, and it will self feed...
Meanwhile Hillary realizing she’s losing will be forced to actually campaign, and Hillary always goes down in the polls the more she’s seen, because she’s just a horrible campaigner and not a likable person... so the more she is out there trying to battle back against Trump the lower she will poll.
The inflection point where you will start to see the compounding building of Trumps lead will happen right about or slightly before the debates. Assuming Trump comes out of the debates without looking like a complete loon.. then you will see that lead start to really take off as those “undecideds” who really aren’t undecideds, but just had to be convinced Trump is viable will come on board largely.... They won’t break for Hillary... they will either come home to Trump or largely stay home on election day.
By Oct it will be obvious to all but the most ardent D that Hillary is on her way to a very bad trouncing. D’s will be playing defense trying to hold onto states no one, no one in the pundit class would ever imagine would be “in play”.
“Hillary stupidly bought into her own narrative and thought she could play wait out the clock.”
This has always been the “Progressives” weakness, at least since the 1960s. They have been very good at lying to themselves and believing their own lies. It is right out of 1984. It used to be that some at the top knew the lies and knew the reality, but the constant winnowing of the political class and the MSM to those who were convincing in their lies,and committed to believing them has made them vulnerable to reality.