[Hoot Gibson]

Polls serve a useful purpose for candidates, although the polls that the two parties pay for often show much different results than the publicly available polls. Candidates' internal polls in major elections have become an absolute necessity. If one party decided not to plan their campaign according to poll numbers, they would have little chance of winning a presidential election. It would be like going into a saloon full of armed gunslingers after checking your own gun outside the door.

According to the polls, Trump has about a 50-50 chance of winning the popular vote nationally next week. If he does, then the odds of him also winning the Electoral College vote will be overwhelming. It is mathematically possible for Trump to win the popular vote but lose the election, but it is very unlikely that will happen.

The problem with some public polls is that they do not always make a good effort to poll a random sample of likely voters and they also do not always poll enough people for the results to have a small margin of error. Polls of registered voters (as opposed to likely voters) are almost meaningless, IMO.

Also, I believe that the last polls taken by the major pollsters before the election tend to be the most accurate ones because accuracy is what attracts new business for the next election cycle.