It has been an extraordinary two weeks on the presidential campaign trail, but then again that statement could have been uttered pretty much at any point during the past year and still have been just as true. This time around, I'm referring to Donald Trump obviously starting to consider the possibility that he's going to lose the general election. He never used to talk about (or even acknowledge) this possibility before now, but all his dismal post-convention polling may have forced him to begin to think about it.

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It's been a long few weeks covering the two national political conventions, and aside from last Friday, this is really the first day I have had with an open column -- one not predetermined by events or the calendar. And a whole lot has been going on in the meantime. I'm not even going to pretend to cover it all today, instead I'm going to offer up a few random vignettes in the form of brief and disconnected paragraphs. As always when I'm in this kind of mood, I will be doing so in homage to the late, great Herb Caen, master of "three-dot" journalism in San Francisco.

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Welcome to the kickoff of my quadrennial "Electoral Math" column series. I've been writing these since 2008, because I've always been astonished that no other statistics guru out there seems to present the presidential race in the way that makes the most sense -- by Electoral College vote, charted over time.

National polls are almost useless in predicting the outcome of the presidential race. "Nationwide, Hillary Clinton is up by four points" tells you precisely nothing about her chances of actually winning the presidency, because (as Al Gore could certainly tell you) the popular vote is completely meaningless in how we actually choose our presidents. Instead, it's all about the Electoral College.

This requires more data and more analysis than most pundits are willing to do. Thankfully, there's a wonderful site that devotes itself to tracking state-level presidential polling, Electoral-Vote.com. They were the only ones around who bothered, eight years ago. While other websites have caught up with them, they still provide the most data possible in a very easy-to-read format, so I'm going to continue to use their data for the 2016 election cycle.

But while it's fun to check in with their site to see how the states are shifting around, all they provide is a daily snapshot in time -- the map for any particular day showing which candidates are ahead in which states. The Electoral Math columns take this one step further, and chart this data over time, so you can see in one chart how the race is changing.

As always (for those familiar with this column series from previous elections), we've first got to take a look at the updated charts, then I'll provide my own picks (applying some gut feeling to the raw polling numbers) before providing all the data at the end. So let's get started with the first graphs of the 2016 season.

The first chart is the "big picture" overview. If you assume all the state-level polling is correct (even the close ones), how close to a winning percentage of Electoral Votes (EV) is either candidate? Hillary Clinton, in blue, starts from the bottom of the chart. Donald Trump, in red, starts at the top of the chart. States which are tied are the white area in between. If the blue is above the halfway line, Hillary will win. If the red is below the line, Trump will win. Here's the initial chart for 2016:

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

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Friday Talking Points is back! Woo hoo! Well, kind of....

We've spent the past two weeks travelling to and from the Democratic National Convention, but due to the three-week period we've got to cover, we're not even going to attempt to adequately revisit everything that's happened in the political world since our last column.

In fact, we're not even going to write our talking points this week, and we're only briefly going to touch on what's going on and quickly hand out the awards, before we get to a rather extraordinary (and extensive) essay at the end, by guest author Eric Varela.

While attending the Democratic National Convention, it was pretty plain to see that party unity has not quite yet been achieved. Oh, sure, the Republicans are divided as well, but the Democrats still have a lot of dissent and restlessness in their own ranks. Or perhaps "leaving their ranks" might be more accurate. To put this another way, Democrats shouldn't be complacent right now about how all the Bernie Sanders voters will eventually come around and vote for Hillary Clinton. Clinton's up in the polls, but turnout is still a very big question. Which is why Eric's essay is an important message the Clinton campaign needs to hear right now.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, so let's instead make an attempt to summarize the past few weeks. The best wrapup we've read, from Salon, started off:

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Obama's Streak Ends

Last month, President Obama's longest winning streak in job approval polling ended. For the first six months of 2016, Obama improved his monthly average job approval number each and every month. That's a longer streak than he's ever managed, to put it into perspective. His job approval rose a whopping 6.5 points during this period, while his average monthly job disapproval number fell 5.4 points. In July, however, both numbers experienced a mild correction, ending this notable streak.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

July, 2016

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This is definitely going to be my final report from Philadelphia. I realize I'm almost a week late with it, but it was a busy and sleep-deprived week all around. In case you missed it, I reviewed the primetime speeches Monday and then yesterday posted my photos from the trip. Today I'm going to cover Day Three and Day Four (outside of the primetime hour), as well as give a few closing thoughts and general impressions.

Day Three

After the first two days of the Democratic National Convention, Day Three seemed to be a turning point of sorts. The pro-Bernie crowd staged their last effective protest inside the arena (and also staged a smaller protest in the media tent), but by the end of the night Democrats had come closer to unity than they had yet managed during the convention to date.

The third night was the most star-studded of the entire convention, with the sitting vice-president, the sitting president, and the new vice-presidential nominee all slated for the closing speeches. Seating inside the arena was at a premium. The ushers at the doors stopped letting people in when their section was full, which left a whole lot of people watching on monitors in the hallways (and lining up at the doors, in the hopes that someone would exit). The place was packed to the roof hours before the main speeches began. Whereas the arena was mostly full on the first two nights, the last two nights it was beyond "standing room only."

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Due to technical reasons (and not having a full-time staff to do this stuff the way big media organizations do), I wasn't able to post photos with all the stories from the Democratic National Convention. Instead, I'm just going to present them all together in this "album." A lot of these were mentioned in my previous coverage, but some of them are just random convention shots.

Without further ado, here's my look at the Democratic National Convention, starting (of course) with a stop to get a cheesesteak.

Sorry Pat's, but Geno's had a parking space right in front of it, which made up our minds for us (the two most famous cheesesteak joints in Philly are right across the street from each other).

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As I write this, the birds are chirping outside my window, the sun is breaking through the morning coastal fog, and the temperature is unremarkable. In other words, your traveling correspondent is back home, leaving behind record-breaking 90-plus-degree temperatures and humidity being so important the television weathermen actually report on it each night (cue Steve Martin from L.A. Story: "Our next weather report will be in four days"). Yes, it's good to be back in California, at least as far as the weather's concerned.

I have to say I shirked a lot of work during last week's Democratic National Convention, but this was due to (1) there not being enough hours in the day, and (2) trying to operate (as it was) on five-or-less hours of sleep each night. Also minor hassles like WiFi not being available when it would have helped the most. But enough self-recrimination. The good news is I took full notes of everything, so I've got at least a few more goodly-sized columns to write. Oh, and also some pictures -- that might just have to be a separate column on its own (perhaps tomorrow, we'll see).

Today I'd like to take a look at the four nights by focusing in only on the primetime hour that appeared on broadcast television. For all the other things that happened on the stage of the convention, you always had to wonder: "Is anyone else out there actually even seeing this stuff?" I mean, cable channels did cover the convention live and you could even just tap into the feed (without all the commentary, in other words), but I wonder how many voters devote that kind of time and attention to this stuff.

Instead, even committed voters, for the most part, will only tune in for one hour a night -- and that's a maximum, since a whole lot of others only bother with the final night's final hour. But, looking back over the articles I've filed, I've been giving the big hour each night short shrift. This is (again) due to being exhausted, since I'd sit down to type about a certain night and then by the time I got to the big hour in the chronology, my eyes were barely open -- so I just posted what I had. So today, to rectify this lack in my coverage, I'm just going to concentrate on the four big hours.

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What follows is a submission my lovely wife made to the Irish Times, for a blog they run which deals with ex-patriot (or "expat") themes for Irish people who have moved outside of the Republic of Ireland. Four years ago, they ran a report she wrote from the 2012 Democratic National Convention, but due to logistics we are able to run it here before they actually get it. Call it nepotism if you will, we're just glad to get it before it even goes to the presses.

The audience for such an article is a bit different than the articles we usually run here at ChrisWeigant.com, so please keep that in mind while reading it. Certain things need explanation which are taken for granted here, just to point out one aspect of this difference. In any case, we are proud to present the following article from "Mrs. Chris Weigant," as she is known here.

-- Chris Weigant

I am an Irish and American woman reporting from the 2016 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. I say I am Irish and American because I am an Irish citizen who is now an American citizen too. I have noticed a theme in recent blogs posted to the Irish Times' Generation Emigration blog. Many fellow expats are wondering if they are still really Irish, given they have lived outside of Ireland for many years and in some cases longer than they lived in Ireland. I too have been thinking that I am losing my connection to my native land. The recent Irish elections that did not have a clear majority, and then the Brexit results, have opened up even more questions than the votes sought to resolve. I am now trying not to get too excited about the possibility of seeing a united Ireland in my lifetime.

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After watching Joe Biden's speech last night, one thing seems patently obvious. He should be launched into the highest rank of Hillary Clinton surrogates out on the campaign trail -- and as soon as possible. Furthermore, scheduling his appearances would be a piece of cake, because all Team Clinton would have to do would be to book Biden into every city and town where Donald Trump appears, a day or two afterwards.

Multiple people at the Democratic National Convention last night (after Biden spoke) told me one version or another of the following: "If Joe Biden were the Democratic nominee, he'd be beating Trump right now by 10 or 15 points." These weren't die-hard Biden fans, mind you, but instead journalists and delegates and other random people I spoke with. Biden's speech was that impressive.

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