Hillary's current paths to victory

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Just for lulz, a breakdown of how easy Clinton's job is.

Path 1: Hold the line
Sweep of CO, WI, MI, PA, VA, NH (and ME-AL, technically unnecessary).  WI is about 95% certain, CO about 90%, a sweep of MI/PA/NH about 90% certain, and VA about 95%.  There is a degree of correlation between these as well.  This sweep is about 85% likely at this point.

Path 2: Florida
Florida = CO + PA.  'Nuff said.  Florida is about 75% likely to go to Clinton at this point.  If Clinton fails to sweep Path 1, Florida is probably only a coin-flip, however.  It increases her chances of victory from 85% to about 92%.

Path 3: North Carolina and/or Nevada
Put together, they make up for PA.  Alone, NC makes up for any other state in Path 1.  If Hillary can't hold the line in Path 1, and can't win FL, getting to 270 with NC and/or NV is probably a 1 in 4 chance.  So you can bump her chances from 92% up to 95%.

Path 4: Ohio
There is no realistic scenario in which Hillary can win Ohio and lose the election.  In theory it could be the deciding state for Hillary, though it would take something fundamentally bizarre.  OH would have ended up to the left of CO, FL, and NC, defying all expectations.  Stranger things have happened, and it does represent another weak point on Trump's map.  Maybe a 1% chance of this happening if she somehow can't get to 270 any other way, increasing her chance to 96%.

That's about it.  She may win more states, but the chances of her needing any of them are in the realm of Trump winning Rhode Island.

Flipping this around, from Trump's perspective he must:

1. Hold his line (OH/FL/NC/NV).  Right now the chances are he'll lose all of them.  Sweeping them is maybe a 15% probability.
2. Break Clinton's line. If Trump does manage to hold onto OH, FL, NC, and NV, the odds of taking something else from Clinton go up.  They are all still long-shots, but given a sweep of FL/OH/NC, there's maybe a 25%-30% chance he can pick something else off.  CO would be his best chance.  Given all this, Trump has about a 4% chance.

Most critical states (by lowest probability that a candidate could win the election without):
1. Florida
2. Pennsylvania
3. Colorado
4. North Carolina
5. Michigan
6. Virginia
7. Nevada
8. Ohio
9. Wisconsin
10. New Hampshire

[elcorazon]

I feel your math is off

[Nym90]

Agree with everything you said. Even in a worst case scenario for her where Trump somehow starts coming back, Clinton has a pretty solid 272 EV firewall of the Obama 2012 states minus ME-2, FL, OH, IA, and NV.

[Gass3268]

It's not a line, it's a wall!

[Illiniwek]

It's not a line, it's a freiwall!

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

I feel your math is off

Remember that we're dealing with the probability of correlated events.  Clinton may have a 90% chance of winning CO and a 90% chance of sweeping PA/MI/NH, but the chances of doing both aren't 0.9 * 0.9.  If Clinton accomplishes one, her chances of doing the other go way up.   The probability of sweeping everything and holding the freiwal I'd put at 85%.