Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 For the first time in this long election campaign, Republican Donald Trump has pulled ahead of Democrat Hillary Clinton in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. 
 
 Mrs Clinton's double-digit lead, which she has held over the past several months, has vanished - and with it, apparently, Democrats' dreams of a transformational 2016 victory that would leave Republicans wandering the wilderness for a generation. 
 
 What happened? A closer look at those poll numbers offers some clarity. 
 
 Republicans have rallied around Trump 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Conservatives, including leaders of the National Rifle Association, are falling in line behind Donald Trump (centre) 
 
 Remember the #NeverTrump movement? No one in the Republican Party seems to. While certain pundits (Bill Kristol) and politicians (Mitt Romney) continue to tilt at the independent-conservative-candidate windmill, the rank and file of the party appear to be falling in line behind their presumptive nominee. 
 
 According to a Washington Post survey, 85% of Republicans plan to vote for their man. A New York Times offering finds a similar number. 
 
 As for the party establishment, most prominent officeholders seem to either be backing Mr Trump or trying their best to disappear into the scenery. Even Senator John McCain, whose war record was belittled by Mr Trump last summer, has said he'll support the party nominee. 
 
 While there still seems to be significant interest in a third-party candidate - 44% of respondents told Washington Post pollsters that they wanted another choice - every passing day makes such a development less likely. 
 
 Republicans are deciding that Mr Trump - warts and all - is their guy. The scene last week, where Mr Trump - who once backed an assault weapons ban - received a hero's welcome and an unusually early endorsement from the National Rifle Association, only drove that point home. 
 
 Hillary Clinton has a Bernie Sanders problem 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sanders supporters love their man but are cool on Hillary Clinton - for now 
 
 A recent Economist/YouGov poll shows that among Sanders supporters, 55% would vote for Mrs Clinton, 15% would back Mr Trump and the rest either don't know or would pick someone else. It's not particularly surprising, given that 61% of Sanders backers view Mrs Clinton unfavourably and 72% say she's "not honest and trustworthy". 
 
 Speaking of Mr Sanders, his supporters cite these recent head-to-head polls as evidence that their man should stay in the Democratic race despite delegate maths that make victory seem extremely unlikely. In the YouGov poll, which shows Mrs Clinton with a 42% to 40% lead over Mr Trump, Mr Sanders had a 48% to 39% advantage. 
 
 That seems to support the contention that Mrs Clinton's supporters are more likely to back Mr Sanders in a general election match-up than the other way around. 
 
 It also could be an indication of what the Washington Post's Philip Bump calls the "special of the house" effect. When presented with two options that they don't like - Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton - some voters are inclined to go for a third, less-known choice. 
 
 The response from the Clinton camp is that Mr Sanders has largely avoided being targeted by his opponents on the left or the right, while the former secretary of state has been bloodied on the political battlefield for decades. 
 
 The Sanders problem isn't going away 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption There will be no rematch of the contentious Clinton-Sanders debate in New York last month. 
 
 The exchanges over head-to-head polling are just part of the increased tension within the Democratic Party that could be having a negative effect on Mrs Clinton's polling numbers. 
 
 Earlier this week, the Clinton campaign announced that it would not take part in a proposed California Democratic debate hosted by Fox News, prompting a stern rebuke from the Sanders team. 
 
 Although Democratic officials have made some attempts at peace-brokering, including offering Mr Sanders the chance to name members of key national convention committees, the man who only recently joined the Democratic Party has continued to rankle the party establishment. 
 
 On Sunday, for instance, he told a television interviewer he planned to back the candidate challenging Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz in her congressional primary. 
 
 On Monday Mr Sanders predicted that the Democratic National Convention would be "messy". 
 
 "Democracy is not always nice and quiet and gentle," he added. 
 
 Then on Tuesday, the Sanders campaign announced it wanted a review of Mrs Clinton's narrow win in the Kentucky primary one week ago. 
 
 Each day brings new evidence that Mr Sanders is not giving up the fight any time soon - no matter how it might affect Mrs Clinton's positioning against Mr Trump. 
 
 The demographics are split 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Hillary Clinton has a decided advantage among women and minorities 
 
 Minorities and women are overwhelming supporting Mrs Clinton. Right now that's being balanced out by whites and men who are backing Mr Trump in large numbers. 
 
 Exactly how big are these gaps? According to the Washington Post poll, 57% of whites and men support Mr Trump. Mrs Clinton can count on the backing of 69% of non-whites, and leads Mr Trump 52% to 38% among women. 
 
 Among whites without a college degree, 65% support Mr Trump versus only 25% for Mrs Clinton. 
 
 Meanwhile, many independents are keeping their powder dry. Although their role is often overstated - they usually end up as reliable partisans when all is said and done - there is a small segment of US voters who are truly free agents. And right now many seem to be balking. 
 
 According to the Washington Post poll, 48% of self-professed independents are backing Mr Trump, while only 35% support Mrs Clinton. The remaining 18% either want someone else or no one. 
 
 The YouGov poll paints a slightly different picture, with Mrs Clinton up 41% to 34% over Mr Trump, but the number not ready to back either - 24% - is equally sizeable. 
 
 But it's still early 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption John McCain led Barack Obama in some polls in 2008 - before being soundly defeated 
 
 Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan in early 1980 presidential polls. Michael Dukakis had a commanding lead over George HW Bush in 1988. John McCain edged ahead of Barack Obama at similar point in the general election cycle in 2008. There were several times in 2012 where Mr Romney had a lead. 
 
 In other words, polls this far out from election day - particularly when one of the primary races is settled and the other isn't - aren't particularly good indicators of election-day outcomes. 
 
 If Mrs Clinton can consolidate her base - and the key is if - then the current Democratic teeth-gnashing may be overblown. 
 
 Mr Trump could be at his polling high-water mark only to see demographics, such as his low standing with women and minorities, and the realities of the state-by-state electoral landscape catch up with him. 
 
 But here's where we cut-and-paste those words of caution in every Trump polling story published since last autumn. The normal political rules don't seem to apply to the man. Just because things have happened one way in the past doesn't mean they will play out that way this time. 
 
 If admonitions that it's too far out to put much faith in polling sound familiar, it's the same thing people were saying last summer, when surveys had Mr Trump on top in key primary states and nationally. 
 
 The only thing we know right now is that, at this moment, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are essentially in a dead heat. And Mr Trump has made a lot of pundits and prognosticators look foolish over the past year. ||||| Why You Should Take A Deep Breath Before Reading The Latest Trump-Clinton Polls 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption John Sommers II/Getty Images John Sommers II/Getty Images 
 
 Hooray! It's that time of election season again, when (depending on whom you support) every single poll is cause for either panic or triumphantly punching the air. 
 
 Election Day, by the way, is Nov. 8. That's almost half a year more of hyperventilation over polls. 
 
 That sounds exhausting. 
 
 But to be fair, there is actual cause for excitement in the polling numbers these days. Polls have swung dramatically in Donald Trump's favor in a matter of weeks. Two new polls released over the weekend showed Hillary Clinton and Trump within the margin of error of each other. The reality TV star and former secretary of state are now within 0.2 percentage points of each other in the RealClearPolitics polling average. 
 
 Whether that makes you ecstatic or enraged, calm down. Here's what these first few general-election polls do and don't tell you. 
 
 Let's Count Grains Of Salt 
 
 The No. 1 rule to remember about polls: They're a snapshot of how people feel right now. They do not predict how Election Day will look. And there are dozens of ways that snapshot can be distorted at any given point in the campaign. 
 
 So if you're looking for grains of salt to take with the latest poll results, there are quite a few to pick from: 
 
 1) Clinton and Trump are in vastly different situations. 
 
 Trump has soundly defeated all his GOP opponents. Clinton, meanwhile, is fighting a two-front battle — one against Trump and one against a primary opponent who, while very unlikely to win the nomination, is still very popular. 
 
 That is a much worse situation for Clinton than Trump. 
 
 "Polls are probably measuring her at a down point in the race right now," said Cliff Zukin, a professor of public policy and polling expert at Rutgers University. "This is a weak moment to measure Clinton support because Bernie Sanders supporters are beating on her. 
 
 Meanwhile, Trump is alone at the head of his party. That gives him the same kind of polling advantage any other presumptive nominee would have at this point. 
 
 "If one party has their nominee wrapped up before the other, we usually see a bump for the nominee who's the presumptive nominee," says Patrick Murray, founding director of the Monmouth Polling Institute. "And that's exactly what we're seeing right now." 
 
 Consider that after John McCain locked up the nomination in March 2008, his numbers bounced above Obama's briefly. But as Obama got close to the Democratic nomination, he gained ground back away from McCain. 
 
 It's not that the current polls are wrong or mismeasuring how people feel. Rather, it's that the current state of the race may be pulling poll respondents in one direction or the other. 
 
 2) The big stuff hasn't happened yet. 
 
 Conventions and the first debate are both two big potential turning points in public opinion, Zukin says. If this is the start of a proverbial roller coaster ride, those are two predictable sharp turns. 
 
 And then there are the unforeseen issues: In mid-2012, Obama had to deal with the Benghazi crisis and Mitt Romney made his infamous 47 percent remark. In 2008, McCain chose a running mate who some say cost him dearly on Election Day (one analysis says Sarah Palin cost him 2 million votes). 
 
 Any number of crises, revelations and gaffes could wildly skew these poll numbers — and with two deeply unpopular candidates, there's plenty of reason to think either candidate could have his/her share of Swift Boat or 47 percent moments. 
 
 3) Late-May polling is historically bad. 
 
 Fun fact: Statistically, we are coming up on what should be the point at which polls are farthest-off from the eventual Election Day outcome. That's what Princeton University's Sam Wang found in a recent analysis. 
 
 "Truly, now is the single worst time to be paying attention to fresh polling data," the neuroscientist and polling expert wrote in a Sunday blog post. 
 
 With the election 169 days away, he added, we're almost at the time of the year where polls tend to deviate most from the eventual general election outcomes. 
 
 Past elections give all kinds of anecdotal evidence of this. Maybe the most popular example is Michael Dukakis' 10-point lead over George H.W. Bush at this point in 1988. 
 
 As for why polls should be the farthest-off from Election Day right now, Wang writes that he doesn't know. Quite possibly, it's because right now, parties are usually still going through their nomination contests. That would lend weight to the theory that Clinton's numbers could shift after she is decisively the Democratic nominee. 
 
 Once again, of course, polls provide good snapshots of how voters feel right now, but polls aren't meant to be predictive. And today's polls right now might be a lot farther from Election Day outcomes than those in coming months. 
 
 4) Unprecedented unpopularity 
 
 Clinton and Trump are the most unpopular candidates on record. And because they're such anomalies in that sense, Murray explained, it's hard to explain what polls are saying with much certainty. 
 
 "Because it's such an unusual and unprecedented situation it's hard to know what this will mean," he said. "Usually if there is a wide gap in favorabilities between the two candidates, it's no contest, but a small gap could go either way. But usually the small gap is with them both being positive, not negative." 
 
 "It's not a situation where we have any evidence in prior elections for how this will play out," he added. 
 
 But Still: Fewer Grains Of Salt Than Usual 
 
 Yes, there are the Dukakises who led earlier on, only to lose their footing. But this is not 1988, and Clinton and Trump are no Dukakis, for one glaring reason: Everyone knows who Clinton and Trump are. 
 
 In an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday, 97 percent of Americans had an opinion on Clinton or Trump — that is, they were able to say they saw them favorably or unfavorably. That's unusual compared to many past election years. Usually, non-incumbent candidates post higher no-opinion numbers. 
 
 That ABC-WaPo poll in May 2012 found that 14 percent of Americans had no opinion on Mitt Romney. In 2004, 12 percent had no opinion of John Kerry. In 2000, more than 20 percent of Americans had no opinion of George W. Bush, and 20 percent said the same of Al Gore. For Dukakis in 1988, it was 25 percent. 
 
 And because people already know what they think of Trump and Clinton, it could be tougher to change those opinions. 
 
 "These are more likely to be an accurate assessment of a starting point than if the candidates were new," Zukin said. 
 
 What About Bernie? 
 
 To be clear, Sanders' path to the nomination is exceedingly narrow at this point. He would need to win 68 percent of pledged delegates (that is, 68 percent of the vote in the remaining states) at this point in order to win the nomination. 
 
 That looks unlikely, to put it mildly. In California, with its 475 pledged delegates, Clinton leads in polls right now by around 10 points. 
 
 But still, Sanders is performing better in general-election matchups against Trump than Clinton is — a fact he touts constantly as a reason he should still be in the race. 
 
 It's true that Sanders is viewed more favorably than Clinton right now. Multiple polls have indicated that her supporters like him better than his like her. 
 
 However, it's also true that Sanders simply hasn't been subjected to the kind of scrutiny and attacks that Clinton has. Clinton has been reserving her harshest jabs lately for Trump, not Sanders, and Trump has likewise been saving his attacks for Clinton. Moreover, Murray adds, Sanders benefits in those polls from Clinton and Trump's uber-high unfavorability numbers. 
 
 "You get this hypothetical situation in which you say, 'Give me anyone who's not Hillary or Trump,' and Sanders is the last man standing in that equation," he said. 
 
 Moreover, this happens in primaries. There is an emotional fight on the Democratic side right now, with Sanders supporters pitted against Clinton's. Once a nominee is selected, that can still change, or at least Clinton hopes — just as her supporters eventually came around to Obama in 2008. ||||| That's weird ... Photo: Justin Sullivan/2016 Getty Images 
 
 Donald Trump is an electoral disaster — the most unpopular major-party nominee in the history of polling. The most hated by women, Hispanics, and “the blacks.” Heck, more than a third of Republicans can’t stand him. He broke the GOP in two, and it may never be whole again. There aren’t enough white men in America to put him in the White House. Congress is now in play. Suburban conservatives will become “Hillary Clinton Republicans.” America’s first female president has already won. 
 
 How young we were in April. How naïve. Thirty days ago — when the discourse was dominated by the sentiments listed above — Clinton was routinely posting double-digit leads over Trump in head-to-head polls. Back then, an NBC–Wall Street Journal survey had her beating the mogul by 11 points. The same poll now has her up three. The ABC News–Washington Post pollsters had Clinton up nine in March — they have her trailing Trump by two today. The RealClearPolitics weekly polling average now has the mogul ahead by a fraction of a point. 
 
 This rapid shift in the state of the race raises two big questions: “Why is this happening?” and “Will it keep happening?” Let’s take them one at a time. 
 
 Why have the polls shifted so dramatically for Trump in recent weeks? 
 
 There are two key points here, both equally important: 
 
 Republicans are not actually divided. 
 
 Donald Trump remains a divisive figure among Republicans who serve in Congress, write for blogs, or cogitate in think tanks. But to the ordinary Republicans out in Real America, the Donald is about as unifying as any other nominee. Back in the heat of the primary fight, when Trump was calling Ted Cruz’s wife ugly — and the senator’s father a suspect in the Kennedy assassination — the mogul did generate some ill will among a subset of the GOP base. In April, the NYT-CBS pollsters found that 36 percent of Republicans disapproved of the Donald. Now, with the primary wrapped up and the Donald’s wrath focused squarely on “Heartless Hillary,” that number has fallen to 21 percent. 
 
 Trump remains a historically unpopular nominee, but so is Clinton. And now that Cruz’s minions have climbed aboard the Trump train, his negatives are looking roughly equivalent to hers. What’s more, the Donald appears to be winning the votes of some his despisers: As my colleague Ed Kilgore has noted, the most recent ABC–Washington Post survey shows “conservative Republicans” backing Trump over Clinton by a 92-3 margin — even though 22 percent of such voters think Trump isn’t qualified to be president. In other words, even among the shrinking percentage of Republicans who don’t like Trump, there is little doubt that their tribe’s vulgar ignoramus is preferable to the enemy faction’s gun-hating, Obama-loving, rape-enabling, Benghazi betraying she-tyrant. 
 
 Bernie Sanders is going down swinging. 
 
 Hillary Clinton is starting to pull away from the Vermont senator in polls of the Democratic primary. But as Sanders’s softer supporters migrate to Hillary, the resolve of hard-core Sandernistas has grown firmer. As the Upshot’s Nate Cohn observes, April’s polls showed Clinton winning between 71 and 82 percent of Sanders supporters in her head-to-heads with Trump. In the latest batch of surveys, that range is between 55 and 72 percent. In the most recent YouGov poll, 61 percent of Sanders backers voiced an unfavorable view of Clinton, while only 38 offered a favorable one — a record high and record low, respectively, in YouGov’s polling of the Democratic race. 
 
 Sanders doesn’t seem to be concerned by this trend. The senator remains harshly critical of Clinton and the “Establishment politics” she represents. In recent weeks he has criticized the Democratic Party officials in Nevada for disenfranchising his supporters at the state’s convention, endorsed the (admittedly objectionable) DNC chair’s primary challenger, and framed Clinton’s refusal to debate him in California as an affront to democracy. All the while, the insurgent socialist has promised to take his political revolution all the way to the convention. 
 
 So is this thing really going to be close? 
 
 The betting markets don’t seem to think so. But then the betting markets once thought 2016 would be the year of the “Jeb!” And considering how thoroughly the Trumpster fire has humiliated political soothsayers this cycle, it seems unwise to offer a single, definitive answer. So, instead, here are two contradictory ones: 
 
 No. Sanders supporters will come home, and Clinton will reestablish a healthy lead. 
 
 This is a uniquely good time to be the Donald: Trump’s primary is over, while his presumptive opponent’s rages on. Back in March, when the GOP race was still hotly contested, just 17 percent of his rivals’ supporters saw Trump favorably. Now, in trial heats with Clinton, he boasts the near-unanimous support of his party’s base. 
 
 But even with that support, Trump is mired around 43 percent in general-election polls. And while his standing with Republicans has improved, he’s still abhorred by the demographics he routinely demeans (women, Hispanics, Hispanic women). There is no reason to think he’ll gain significant ground with these groups in the coming months. Clinton has a massive fundraising advantage and will be able to mine Trump’s vast back catalogue of racist and sexist musings for dynamite negative ads, which will incessantly remind Ohio’s single women and Florida’s Latinos why they can’t let the Donald become their president. 
 
 The stubborn loyalty of Sandernistas is the only thing keeping Trump competitive. And precedent strongly suggests that once Bernie turns his populist fury on the billionaire across the aisle, the party will unite and Clinton will pull away. In 2008, John McCain caught up to Obama after receiving the Republican nomination — but once the protracted Democratic race finally came to an end, the future president regained a comfortable advantage. What’s more, several recent polls portray a Democratic Party less divided than it was at this point in 2008. 
 
 May 2008, NYT/CBS poll: 60% of Clinton backers say they'd vote Obama 
 
 
 
 May 2016, NYT/CBS poll: 72% of Sanders backers say they'd vote Clinton — Taniel (@Taniel) May 19, 2016 
 
 As NPR notes, late-May presidential polls have a terrible track record. At this point in 1988, Michael Dukakis led George H.W. Bush by ten points. Right now the safest bet is to trust the fundamentals: Virtually all recent surveys show there are more Democrats than Republicans in the 2016 electorate; the incumbent party’s president has a high approval rating; the Republican candidate is an incoherent, transparently misogynistic pathological liar who has irrevocably alienated critical swaths of the electorate — and many of his own party’s top donors and intellectuals. By the time the confetti falls in Philadelphia, Trump will no longer be visible in Clinton’s rear-view mirror. 
 
 Yes. Sanders supporters hate the Democratic Party, and Trump is a unique political talent. 
 
 Clinton supporters’ opposition to Obama in 2008 was categorically different from Berners’ antipathy for this year’s Democratic front-runner. The latter are disproportionately young, independent, and alienated from the Democratic Party. The Clinton-Obama race was primarily an argument about qualifications and competence; the Clinton-Sanders race is a referendum on the need for “revolutionary” change. Trump doesn’t need to win over the revolutionaries — he just needs to make them disgusted enough with the major-party offerings to stay home or go Green. 
 
 Sure, May polls are historically inaccurate, but this year’s race is a special case. Ninety-seven percent of Americans already have an opinion of Clinton and Trump. In May 2012, 14 percent of the country had no opinion on Mitt Romney; in 1988, a quarter of America had nothing to say about Dukakis. The people know what their options are. And they are evenly divided. 
 
 Clinton has always had trouble growing her support over the course of a campaign. Trump, in an admittedly limited sample, has enjoyed the opposite trajectory. This is a change election, and Hillary is a synecdoche for the last two decades of Establishment rule. And don’t forget about her “damn emails.” America has never been so ripe for tyranny. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| A month ago, Hillary Clinton had a big lead in national and battleground state polls. Today, she has a modest lead at best. A few surveys even show Donald Trump ahead. 
 
 What happened? Mr. Trump has made gains in unifying his party’s base, while Mrs. Clinton has not done the same with hers. If anything, her problem with Bernie Sanders’s voters has gotten a bit worse. 
 
 To some extent, Mr. Trump’s gains are not surprising. Candidates usually rise in the polls after they win the nomination and consolidate their party’s base. John McCain and Mitt Romney erased Barack Obama’s leads in 2008 and 2012 after they secured their party’s nomination; Mr. Obama reclaimed a clear lead in 2008 after he clinched the Democratic nomination. 
 
 But Mr. Trump’s success is an important accomplishment. A month ago, there were serious reasons to question whether the party would ever fully unify behind him. He has made a lot of progress, and has done it without much backing from Paul Ryan or Ted Cruz. The chance of a big win for Mrs. Clinton has appeared to decline as a result. 
 
 Photo 
 
 The prospect of another fairly close general election is not what Democrats were hoping for against Mr. Trump, but Mrs. Clinton will have a chance to widen the gap by winning over supporters of Mr. Sanders. 
 
 Mr. Trump, despite his gains, now finds himself at around 42 or 43 percent in national polls. He still trails Mrs. Clinton in the balance of recent surveys, even though she is facing a divided Democratic Party. She is in the lead, in no small part, because there are simply more Democratic-leaning voters than Republican-leaning voters in the country. All but one of the most recent surveys show that there are more Democrats than Republicans. 
 
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 But Mrs. Clinton nonetheless struggles because of her inability to consolidate the independent-leaning, young, liberal supporters of Mr. Sanders. The most recent wave of national surveys shows Mrs. Clinton winning just 55 to 72 percent of Mr. Sanders’s supporters. She’s faring far worse among young and liberal voters than one would expect. 
 
 The good news for Mrs. Clinton is that there’s a lot of room for improvement. She could make gains after winning the nomination, much as Mr. Trump already has. That could leave her with a considerable advantage. 
 
 Mr. Obama’s gains in June 2008 are probably the clearest precedent: He led by a wide margin until Mr. McCain won the nomination; he regained the lead after he was the Democratic Party’s choice. 
 
 Clinton Struggling to Unify Democrats Share of Bernie Sanders supporters who say they would vote for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump in the general election. ABC/Washington Post CBS/NYT YouGov March/April May 77% 71% March/April May 82% 72% March/April May 71% 55% Share of Bernie Sanders supporters who say they would vote for Hillary Clinton rather than Donald Trump in the general election. ABC/Washington Post CBS/NYT YouGov March/April May 77% 71% March/April May 82% 72% March/April May 71% 55% 
 
 Mrs. Clinton may find it not so easy to repeat Mr. Obama’s gains. There has been weakening in her support among Mr. Sanders’s supporters over the last month or so. In April, Mrs. Clinton held between 71 and 82 percent of Mr. Sanders’s supporters; today it’s between 55 and 72 percent. 
 
 Exactly what’s driving the shift is hard to say. What’s clear is that Mrs. Clinton’s challenge isn’t totally superficial. Just 20 percent of Mr. Sanders’s supporters have a favorable view of her in the most recent New York Times/CBS News survey, while 47 percent have an unfavorable one. 
 
 These numbers are not too different from the “anyone but Trump” voters in March. Then, The New York Times/CBS News survey found that just 17 percent of Republican primary voters who didn’t support Mr. Trump had a favorable view of him, while 50 percent were unfavorable. Depending on your point of view, it’s either a surprisingly bleak comparison or a favorable precedent, since Mr. Trump has since made gains in the polls. 
 
 Mrs. Clinton could get a lot of help in unifying the party, whether from President Obama, Elizabeth Warren or perhaps even Mr. Sanders himself. 
 
 The polls after Mrs. Clinton wins the nomination — and especially after the two party conventions — will provide a somewhat more instructive comparison between the two candidates. ||||| Hey, we need to talk. 
 
 Wait, who said that? 
 
 It’s me, your panicked liberal friend. Remember me? The one who is convinced Donald Trump is going to be our next president and is looking for rental properties in Canada. 
 
 Oh, hey, how are you doing? 
 
 Not so good. Two weeks ago you told me that it would take a miracle for Donald Trump to win the presidency, and now I’m seeing all these polls that show Trump either tied with or beating Hillary Clinton. I’ve been in a fetal position for two days, living on Ritz crackers and marshmallow fluff. 
 
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 OK, take it easy. You have to remember that the election is still 5½ months away and you can’t read too much into polls in May. If you panic over every poll that shows the race tight between now and November, you’re going to make yourself crazy. 
 
 But, I’m panicked now! If you’re sure Trump is going to lose, why is he leading in the polls? 
 
 Get Today in Opinion in your inbox: Globe Opinion's must-reads, delivered to you every Sunday-Friday. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here 
 
 There are a few reasons. First of all, we shouldn’t freak out over a single poll, especially one that stands in contrast to what other polls are telling us about the race. We should always look at polling averages to get a sense of where the race stands. 
 
 So if polling averages are the thing to look at, why shouldn’t I freak out over the fact that Pollster.com shows Clinton ahead by 2 points and Real Clear Politics has Trump up by 0.2? 
 
 You mean, aside from the fact that it’s May and the election is in November? 
 
 I already told you, I’m panicking now! 
 
 OK, OK. There are a few things to look at in some of the polls that are included in these averages. First, they include a Rasmussen poll that shows Clinton losing by 5 points to Trump and winning less than half the nonwhite vote. 
 
 That doesn’t seem right. 
 
 It’s not. She will likely win 70 to 80 percent of the nonwhite vote. Along the same lines, the Fox poll has Trump getting 23 percent of the Latino vote (which is what Mitt Romney received in 2012). It shows the electorate +1 Republican even though Democrats have a 6 to 7 point advantage in voter registration. The NBC poll that has Clinton up by 3 points gives Trump 28 percent of the Latino vote. Other polls suggest that the percent of white voters will go up this year, even though that number has declined every year since 1992. For example, that year 87 percent of the electorate was white. In 2012, it was 72 percent. Any poll that shows Trump doing as well as Romney with Hispanics, and also shows a rising number of white voters, should be viewed with suspicion. 
 
 So, you’re saying the polls are skewed? 
 
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 I wouldn’t use that word, but I would say that a few of the polls that show a close race seem to be using some problematic methodology — and it’s always important to look closely at poll internals before jumping to conclusions. 
 
 OK, forget the head-to-head polls; if Trump is such a toxic candidate, why is he even close to Clinton in the polls? Shouldn’t she be crushing him? 
 
 Not necessarily; and certainly not right now. It’s important to keep in mind where we are in the race — the Republican campaign is over and the Democratic one is not. That goes a long way toward explaining what’s happening right now. Republicans are rallying around their likely standard-bearer. Even some of Trump’s harshest critics are urging voters to back the presumptive nominee. A couple of weeks ago, Senator Lindsey Graham said he “cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump.” Now he’s urging conservative donors to get behind him. So Republicans accepting reality is almost certainly pushing up Trump’s numbers. 
 
 On the Democratic side, since the race is ongoing, with more primaries remaining, you have a lot of Democrats who support Bernie Sanders and are not yet willing to put their backing behind Clinton. As my colleague James Pindell put it, the race “has tightened . . . because Republicans have come around to Trump, while Clinton is still dealing with a divided party.” For example, according to the recent New York Times poll, which has Clinton up 6 points over Trump, 28 percent of Sanders voters say they won’t back her in November. 
 
 Oh no, she’s going to lose, she’s going to lose! Run for your lives! 
 
 Wait a second. Calm down. Back in April 2008, 35 percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for the likely GOP nominee, John McCain, over Barack Obama. At the end of the day, however, the overwhelming majority of Democrats voted for Obama. 
 
 Unless Bernie Sanders refuses to endorse Clinton — and I can’t imagine he would do that — the vast majority of Sanders backers will vote for the party nominee. Indeed, when the last primary occurs on June 7 and Clinton wraps up the nomination, I expect that you will see a jump in her poll numbers, as Democrats unite behind the nominee. 
 
 So when the Sanders supporters on my Facebook page say they’re not going to vote for Clinton in November, I shouldn’t take it too seriously? 
 
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 That would be my advice. People talk a lot during primaries, but, in the end, partisan affiliation is a pretty powerful thing, especially in a highly polarized political environment like we have today — and especially with a candidate like Trump. If Sanders endorses Clinton and works for her in the fall and encourages his supporters to get behind her, I fully expect she’ll win upwards of 90 percent of the Democratic vote. 
 
 But what about all these new voters that Trump is bringing out? What if they all turn out to vote in November? 
 
 There are lots of myths around Donald Trump’s support, and this is probably the biggest one. What Trump is doing is energizing Republicans who have been reliable GOP voters for years to cast a ballot in the Republican primary. These aren’t new voter. They traditionally voted in the general election but sat out the primary, and the overwhelming majority are likely to vote in November — for a Republican — with or without Trump on the ballot. 
 
 The basic structure of this race — and, in fact, of presidential politics — hasn’t changed all that much. Democrats begin the race with a slight advantage in the electoral map and in the popular vote. They have a big demographic advantage in that 28 to 30 percent of the electorate will be nonwhite and Democrats have a huge advantage among those voters — an advantage that will likely be even bigger this year. They have a big edge with women, one that will be accentuated by having Trump and the first female nominee on the ticket. And, if recent reporting is any indication, in key battleground states like Ohio and Florida, the Democrats have a significant infrastructure advantage. Plus, there are still many months to go before the election. Lots of voters still aren’t paying attention. We still have the conventions, the debates, campaign ads, etc. It’s way too early to be focused on head-to-head polls. 
 
 So you’re saying maybe I shouldn’t put down the deposit on that house outside Vancouver. 
 
 Well, I hear British Columbia is lovely, but I might hold off on that for now. 
 
 Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71
– Not too long ago, Hillary Clinton held double-digit leads over Donald Trump in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup. Trump, however, has now actually edged ahead of her in an average of national polls compiled at RealClearPolitics. The development has prompted all kinds of analysis. Some highlights: "Mr. Trump has made gains in unifying his party's base, while Mrs. Clinton has not done the same with hers," writes Nate Cohn at the New York Times. "If anything, her problem with Bernie Sanders' voters has gotten a bit worse." But presidential polls in late May have "historically bad" track records, notes NPR. Let's see what happens after she picks up the nomination. Those who fear a Trump presidency shouldn't panic, writes Michael Cohen at the Boston Globe. "Unless Bernie Sanders refuses to endorse Clinton—and I can't imagine he would do that—the vast majority of Sanders backers will vote for the party nominee." On the other hand, "Sanders supporters hate the Democratic Party, and Trump is a unique political talent." This at the Daily Intelligencer, whose overview offers arguments for both Clinton and Trump supporters. Plus, "after six years of political gridlock, many voters are yearning for change in Washington, and that should help Trump," writes Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times. "The only thing we know right now is that, at this moment, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are essentially in a dead heat," writes Anthony Zurcher at the BBC. "And Mr. Trump has made a lot of pundits and prognosticators look foolish over the past year."