Donald Trump Pulls Ahead of Hillary Clinton In Latest Polls

In a series of national polls following the start of the Republican National Convention last week, which brought an official end to the party's protracted search for a presidential nominee, Donald Trump pulled ahead of his presumptive November rival Hillary Clinton. At least four polls give the real estate mogul anywhere from a one- to four-point lead over the former secretary of state, whom he had trailed since late May.

Polling aggregator Real Clear Politics, which averages a series of recent opinion surveys, now gives Trump a 0.2 percent overall lead. However, this may understate the bump the Republican received in recent days, since the aggregator includes polls that were taken before the convention.

The Huffington Post's poll aggregator still gives Clinton a slight edge, though it has diminished to less than a single point.

FiveThirtyEight, the election forecasting platform run by Nate Silver, whose extremely accurate predictions in the election of 2012 won him wide acclaim, has also greatly increased its estimation of Trump's odds of winning in November. At their lowest point, Silver gave Trump gave less than a 20 percent chance of securing the presidency — now he's up to 46.2 percent. Clinton has dropped from a greater than 80 percent chance of victory to a nail-biting 53.7 percent.

This "Trump Bump," if you will, is not entirely unexpected. Historically, presidential candidates can expect to see their poll numbers rise following the party's convention.

In 2012, Republican candidate Mitt Romney saw a slight boost in polls after his convention.

With around 35 million viewers tuning in for Trump's closing speech, it's not difficult to see why he could garner more enthusiasm for his presidential prospects. Presumably, Clinton will pick up additional support as the Democratic Party rallies around her in the coming days.

Nevertheless, Clinton supporters may find little comfort in these observations. Given the unconventional nature of Trump's candidacy, having a race so close that a relatively minor convention bump can turn the tables may unsettle those more amenable to the political establishment, as Silver noted in a tweet:

Critics of Trump even had reason to hope the traditional convention bump would fail to appear, given the RNC's relative mismanagement. With a plagiarism scandal marring the would-be first lady's speech, and Sen. Ted Cruz's public refusal to endorse the party's nominee onstage, there was ample evidence to believe this convention would be a historical deviation.

As far as the polls are concerned, however, it appears to have been quite typical.

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