On Election Day, a look at the dynamics of the race in the final days: Why Donald Trump will pull off an upset victory and why he won’t.

Why Trump Will Win
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign has boiled down to a narrow Electoral College path that will try to to shake loose a few traditionally blue states.

In his quiver is his most powerful arrow: He is a disruptor — an agent of change. In an age of Uber and the internet, voters believe change comes with certain agents. Trump looks like one of them. Hillary Clinton certainly does not.

“I think he has to close the sale to the American people.”

If Trump’s change strategy works, it won’t be unprecedented. Ronald Reagan won surprise Democratic-leaning states in 1980 — a lot of them — when he unseated President Jimmy Carter.

And Barack Obama shook loose traditionally Republican states such as Indiana and North Carolina in 2008 when he won the White House.

It can be done and has been done.

And Trump has arguably positioned himself to do it. While network news polls have him down in the popular vote, he is ahead in the Investor’s Business Daily poll conducted by TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, one of the more accurate national pollsters. On Sunday, he was up 44-43 over Democrat Hillary Clinton in a four-way match.

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But what will it really take for Trump to win?

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It will take a strong closing argument, especially on ending corruption in Washington, and on Wall Street, according to Craig Shirley, a historian and Ronald Reagan biographer.

“I think he has to close the sale to the American people,” Shirley told LifeZette.

Whatever you think of Trump, it’s hard to deny he hasn’t pushed to close the sale, especially on corruption. Even the FBI’s announcement on Sunday — that it had reviewed ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner’s emails and would be again closing the case on Clinton’s email issue — keeps the corruption issue alive through Election Day.

On Friday, Fox News released a poll showing Hillary Clinton up 2 points, 45 to 43. But the poll had a surprising tidbit: Trump has regained the voter enthusiasm lead, “big league.”

The Fox News poll found 63 percent of Trump voters are extremely interested in the race, while only 54 percent of Clinton’s voters are. That edge has some observers looking past the big polls and looking at the possibilities of surprises like ones seen in 1980, when Reagan closed the gap and then some. Reagan beat an incumbent Democratic president, winning 44 states.

“My cool, left-brain analysis says that Mrs. Clinton has all of the traditional advantages: big money, a disciplined candidate, an effective get-out-the-vote operation, major celebrity endorsements,” said Monica Crowley, a Washington Times opinion editor and Fox News commentator. “But my warm, right-brain analysis says that this is anything but a traditional year and that Donald Trump has two things money cannot buy: He’s a change agent in a change election year, and he’s forged an intense emotional bond with his growing army of supporters. There are so many unmeasurable cross-currents running through this election that no one really knows what’s going to happen. But I absolutely would not underestimate the power of the great silent majority to stand up, be counted, and elect Mr. Trump president.”

Eddie Zipperer, an assistant political science professor at Georgia Military College, envisions various Electoral College paths for Trump. The path is narrow — he cannot afford to lose certain key states or collapse in the Midwest, Zipperer says.

But ultimately, it’s about change, Zipperer adds. And that will help Trump as it did Reagan.

“I think people who want change will get out to vote in much bigger numbers than people who want the status quo, and the turnout will carry Trump to a narrow victory,” says Zipperer.

Helping Trump is the fact that the Republican vote has been underestimated. Democrats have done one of their best jobs ever getting people to vote early.

So expect Trump to win big with voters who actually vote on Election Day.

And the election isn’t really about Trump. It’s about change. That’s a good side to be on, and Trump can win because of it.

Why Trump Will Lose
In a contest featuring the two most disliked presidential candidates in modern history, Republican Donald Trump will need everything to break his way today to pull off what would at this point be a huge upset.

It probably won’t happen.

“If you’re talking about a 2- to 3-point difference in a swing state, I would err on the side of the campaign that has put forth the better field operation.”

In trying to handicap the race, start with Occam’s Razor, the concept that the simplest answer is usually the correct one. Look at the polls. Opinion surveys are not always right, of course. But pollsters get paid for accuracy, and they usually come close to the mark. That is particularly the case when they mostly flow in one direction.

Democrat Hillary Clinton as of Monday had a lead in the RealClearPolitics average of nearly 3 percentage points. That’s bigger than it sounds. It’s an average, meaning some polls show a much wider gap. A slew of surveys dropped Monday, and Clinton led in nearly all of them. The one outlier — Trump’s great hope — is the Los Angeles Times tracking poll. He has performed well all campaign long there and had a 5-point lead on Monday.

The Times poll employs an unusual methodology in which the interviewers select from the same group of voters every day. If Trump wins, it may be because the Times poll got it right and everyone else was wrong. It is possible — but the odds say it is unlikely.

Perhaps more troubling for Trump is how voters assess the candidates. They dislike both of them. But a majority of voters believe Clinton is qualified, while a majority believe Trump is not. In some polls, the share of voters who think Trump is unqualified approaches 60 percent. That is a steep hurdle.

Clinton also is getting help from two factors outside of her control. One is FBI Director James Comey’s decision to once again close his investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information. The benefit to Clinton will be muted by the fact that so many people have voted early. But to Election Day voters who were hesitant to cast a ballot for a candidate under investigation, Comey cleared that up.

The other factor in Clinton’s favor is the improving favorability of her fellow Democrat, President Obama. Four approval polls came out Monday, and Obama’s approval rating was 50 percent or better in all of them. To be sure, a majority of Americans still do not like the direction the country is heading, but most appear not to blame Obama. That’s good new for Clinton, who implicitly is running for a third Obama term.

Then there’s campaign organization. Trump’s decision not to raise money from big donors and his unorthodox style resulted in the biggest disparity in resources between presidential campaigns since 1972, when Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern. Notwithstanding signs of success in early voting and the Republican National Committee’s insistence that it can perform the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) tasks normally handled by campaigns, most experts believe Clinton has the superior organization.

If they are right, that means Clinton is the favorite to win toss-up states Trump simply cannot afford to lose.

“If you’re talking about a 2- to 3-point difference in a swing state, I would err on the side of the campaign that has put forth the better field operation,” said Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in North Carolina.

Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the conservative-leaning Media Research Center, agreed.

“For politics, excitement and energy win primaries,” he wrote in an email to LifeZette. “Organization wins the general. Clintons have been building their organization for decades. Add in the corrupt nature of early voting that allows Democrats to bring in voters like Tammany Hall and that’s just too much to overcome at this late hour.”

Trump has massive enthusiasm and draws eye-popping crowds. But as Bloomberg Politics Managing Editor Mark Halperin noted on “The Laura Ingraham Show” Monday, an enthusiastic vote counts the same as a tepid one.

“Is that group 33 percent of the country? Is that group 43 percent of the country?” he asked. “Is that group 45, 46 percent of the country? Because if it’ s not 45 percent, he’s not gonna win … Big crowds at the end doesn’t mean you’re going to win.”

Finally, there is the cold reality of the Electoral College. Clinton has many paths to 270 electoral votes; Trump but a few. The New York billionaire likely must hold all of the states Mitt Romney won in 2012. That’s no sure thing. North Carolina is a dogfight, and polls have suggested that Arizona and Georgia are in play.

From there come Ohio and Florida, two large states Romney lost narrowly. Trump seems to have the edge in Ohio. Florida is a true toss-up. An expected large increase in Latino voting and Clinton’s GOTV apparatus could snatch it. If Trump loses any of those states, it’s probably game over.

Even if he wins them, though, he would still come up short. In fact, as the map below shows, Trump could win all of the Romney states and take the Obama-voting states of Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire — and still lose.

predicted-map

That probably is the best path. If he won Nevada instead of New Hampshire, he’d still come up short. He’d have to win both — to force a 269-269 tie and throw the race to the House of Representatives.

That’s possible — but, especially given his standing in the polls, it is extraordinarily unlikely.

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One final word about Brexit. It has become the stuff of legend that polls in Britain showed the “Remain” side winning, only to come up short when British voters chose to break from the European Union early this year. The reality does not match the narrative. In 35 surveys conducted in June, 17 gave the edge to “Leave,” while 15 placed “Remain” in the lead.

The late momentum did appear to be on the “Remain” side. Brexit led in only four of the 11 final pre-referendum polls. But The Huffington Post Pollster average was just a half a percentage point in favor of “Remain.” In other words, it was essentially a tied race that could go either way. A fair reading of the presidential election polls suggests that Trump is much further behind.

He’ll need a lot of luck to pull off what would have to be considered the biggest upset in a presidential contest in decades.