It’s almost over

Here’s one thing we know for certain: California will remain blue this year.

Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 54%-30% among likely voters in our new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll of California voters; 58%-32% when we pressed those likely voters on where they would land if they “had to choose” only between the two major candidates.

(Note this is our traditional telephone-based statewide survey, not to be confused with our panel-based “Daybreak” national tracking poll, which is conducted by different pollsters using a different methodology).

That top line result shouldn’t come as a surprise, but underneath, the poll offers interesting insights into the election. Check back Sunday for Melanie Mason’s complete write-up of the results.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in the presidential campaign and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

2016 MAY RECAP 2012

That Clinton victory margin in California looks awfully familiar. In 2012, the final, official statewide results showed President Obama defeating Mitt Romney 60.2%-37.1%.

If you take into account that the poll sample — even the likely voters — includes a few percentage points worth of people who say they may not vote at all, Clinton seems poised to roughly match Obama’s share of the actual votes cast.

Trump likely will come in a few points below Romney, reflecting his weakness among suburban voters, particularly women. Many of those suburban Republicans will not vote for Clinton — some will vote for a third party and others will stay home, a drop in turnout that could hurt Republicans down the ballot.

We put that Trump weakness in the suburbs in the spotlight this week when Seema Mehta wrote about the likelihood that Orange County may vote for Clinton. The county has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1936, the longest streak for one party of any county in the state.

The possibility that Orange County could flip, Mehta wrote, echoes what’s happening in other big suburban regions around the country, from the collar counties outside Philadelphia to Gwinnett County outside Atlanta and on west to suburbs of Houston and Dallas.

But Trump at least partially offsets those suburban losses by picking up strength among blue-collar, white voters who have sided with Democrats in the past. That’s why, for all the turmoil of the 2016 campaign, the overall national polls and the state-by-state electoral maps show this race heading down a path that is similar to 2012, as I wrote this week.

I won’t recap all that I wrote, but just highlight one key point: The polls bounce around a lot more than the race actually does.

Much of up and down in the polls that gets ballyhooed on television results from simple random variation in polling results coupled with what pollsters call “response bias.”

That’s a fancy label for the reality that people are more likely to respond to a poll about the election when they want to talk about it, which is to say when they think their candidate is doing well. When a headline blares that Trump has been caught on an “Access Hollywood” videotape bragging about being able to get away with assaulting women, his backers are less likely to respond to a survey, and his poll numbers drop. The same goes for Clinton backers after last week’s FBI announcement about newly found emails.

So, yes, the race has tightened — they typically do in the final weeks — and, yes, Trump has a chance of winning. But his chances are not as good as Romney’s were, and the race remains more stable, and less volatile, than many people think.

Speaking of volatility, Don Lee took a look at what the financial world is betting on. Markets have pretty much priced in a Clinton win. If that’s wrong, expect some turmoil.

HIDDEN VOTERS?

There’s been much talk about the possibility that Trump will do much better than the polls suggest because, the argument goes, there are Trump supporters who just won’t admit that to a pollster.

That’s always a possibility, but through most of the Republican primaries, Trump never over-performed his polls. And this week, Morning Consult, the polling and media company, ran a test of the hidden voter hypothesis. Its conclusion: Some “shy Trump voters” exist, but very few, and not nearly enough to sway an election.

There should be at least as much concern in the other direction. Polls have much more difficulty contacting younger people, minorities and low-income Americans than they do in finding older, more affluent whites. A lot of variation in polls comes from efforts to adjust for that deficit.

In 2012, a lot of polls underestimated Obama’s vote, largely because they didn’t reach enough young and minority voters. With early vote data showing an upsurge of first-time Latino voters in several states, that could be the case again this year.

DON’T FORGET THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Mark Barabak, Cathy Decker and I will do the final update of our interactive electoral map on Sunday. Check back then to see our predictions, and make your own.

Currently, the map shows Clinton leading in more than enough states to secure the White House. Will that hold up?

Winning requires 270 electoral votes. How to get there? The map allows you to play political strategist and try out as many scenarios as you would like.

We’ve taken a lot of looks at swing states in the last several months. Barabak had one last look this week at an unlikely battleground — Texas, where Trump has Republicans worried about losing a congressional seat.

And Michael Finnegan went to Philadelphia, where Trump’s talk of poll-monitoring in urban areas has black voters fighting back with monitoring of their own.

THE END GAME

As with most endeavors, closing the deal on the election involves lawyers. David Savage checked in on what’s become a quadrennial exercise — both sides amassing campaign lawyers to prepare for trouble.

It’s not just the lawyers who may be shouting after the votes are counted. Lisa Mascaro took a look at Trump’s ardent supporters and asked: Will they keep fighting if he loses?

Many of those Trump supporters are holding out hope for more last-minute help from the FBI. But Del Wilber talked to experts familiar with the email case, who pointed out that it would take a bombshell for FBI to push charges.

And check out Mike Memoli and Chris Megerian’s explainer on what the WikiLeaks emails tell us about Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and what they don’t).

Evan Halper and Joe Tanfani caught up with David Brock, the well-compensated mastermind of the Clinton opposition research and attack machine. Their piece explains how Brock has found new ways around the campaign finance laws, allowing him to run a super-PAC while still fully coordinating with Clinton’s campaign.

Finally, Robin Abcarian spent time on the campaign trail with Bill Clinton, the natural, as he sought votes in places that love Trump.

FOLLOW OUR TRACKING POLL

The USC Dornsife/LA Times tracking poll has been tracing Trump’s and Clinton’s trajectories since early summer. The poll shows a better result for Trump than most other surveys. Why is it different? Here are several of the reasons.

QUESTIONS ABOUT TRUMP, CLINTON? WE’VE GOT ANSWERS

Where they stand on issues, what they’ve done in their lives, their successes, their failures, what their presidencies might look like: We’ve been writing about Clinton and Trump for years, and we’ve pulled the best of that content together to make finding what you want to know easier. So check out All Things Trump and All Things Clinton.

LOGISTICS

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That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.