One staple of punditry in a presidential year is an obsession with “the map” and “paths” to 270. I plead guilty to this myself at times and, of course, it matters who is doing well in which states and what the inherent strengths of each candidate are in a given battleground. But this can be over-done, because the map changes based on what’s happening with the race nationally. When Trump was losing by 7 points nationally, his map was impossible; now that he is closing to a tie, it looks better; if he were to pull ahead by 2-3 points, it would look pretty obvious.