onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Nevada is not of critical importance. Rather, it is a lesser included state. He has to get at least one state that is much more difficult. If he gets that state, say Michigan, Nevada will win comfortably.Early voting is baked into the poll numbers, in the sense that pollsters should be asking respondents if they voted, and if so, for whom. And then it simply goes into the poll number as part of the sample response. So the polling numbers and, by extension, the forecast ought to include the early vote.
But I think that exposes a weakness of an exclusively poll-based statistical model. They currently have Nevada - whose EVs are of vital importance to Trump given how few opportunities he has - as little better than a toss-up. But Jon Ralston, who knows Nevada voting perhaps better than anyone, says that early voting patterns are a close match for 2012, where Obama won by nearly 7 points. He says barring some huge shakeup in the voting patterns of party registrants, i.e. either lots of registered Ds or Is voting Trump - which polling says is not going to happen - Clinton is going to win the state.
Early voting in most other places seems to be showing far less clear results - except for Texas, where most commenters still seem to give a wink and a nudge but I think Clinton has a real chance at winning.
You are correct that poll base prediction models have flaws. One is that they are always yesterday's news--if you are very fortunate. More often, they are week old news, which can be like week old fish. OTOH using a previous election for comparison is a different minefield. Using any previous election as a standard for this one is unusually problematic.
I am not sure why you think Clinton has a chance in Texas. Trump has as much chance to win New Jersey. In either case, there will 35-40 states in front of them.
J