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   The race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has tightened. Clinton, whose lead over Trump exceeded 8 percentage points at her peak following the Democratic convention, is ahead by 4 or 5 percentage points today, according to our polls-only forecast. 
   
   The tighter margins in the polls, which reflect a loss of support for Clinton along with a modest improvement for Trump, have come gradually over the past few weeks. The evidence of a tightening has become more widespread, however, and it’s particularly clear in polls that surveyed the race just after the conventions and are retaking its temperature now. Fox News’s national poll, for instance, had Clinton up by 9 points just after the conventions (in the version of the poll that included third-party candidates) and has her up by 2 points now. 
   
   There isn’t any guarantee that Trump will continue to gain ground. Over the course of the year, polls have oscillated between showing a dead heat at Trump’s best moments and a lead of 8 to 10 percentage points for Clinton at her peaks. We’re about halfway between those goal posts now. It’s plausible that the recent shift reflects Clinton’s convention bounce wearing off — reversion to the mean — as much as it does momentum for Trump per se. Most importantly, Clinton is still ahead, with a 74 percent chance of winning according to the polls-only model and a 70 percent chance according to polls-plus. 
   
   But what if the race continues to tighten? I’ve often heard Democrats express a belief that Clinton’s position in the swing states will protect her in the Electoral College even if the race draws to a dead heat overall. But this is potentially mistaken. Although it’s plausible that Clinton’s superior field operation will eventually pay dividends, so far her swing state results have ebbed and flowed with her national numbers. 
   
   Take Wisconsin, for example. At her peak, Clinton had a double-digit lead there, according to our polls-only forecast. By Wednesday morning, it had declined to an estimated 7 points, as a result of our model’s trend line adjustment — which adjusts polls in all states based on shifts it detects in the race overall — along with data from the Ipsos 50-state tracking poll. 
   
   We know that some readers don’t like the trend line adjustment. But if anything, the model hadn’t been aggressive enough. Two highly rated, traditional telephone polls of Wisconsin came out Wednesday, and they showed Clinton up by just 3 points and 5 points. The 3-point lead was in a poll from Marquette University, which had Clinton up by 13 points just after the Democratic National Convention. (As of Thursday morning, Clinton is projected to win by 5 points in Wisconsin, according to the polls-only model.) 
   
   Usually, the trend line adjustment helps the model peg what forthcoming polls will look like in a state even if there haven’t been many of them recently. When Clinton established a roughly 8-point lead nationally in August, for example, it figured we’d see polls showing her with leads of 10 to 12 percentage points in some of her better swing states, such as Michigan and Colorado, along with leads of 5 to 6 percentage points in swing states that are just slightly redder than the country as a whole, such as Ohio and Florida. And that’s pretty much what we saw, at least on average. Now that the race has tightened to 4 or 5 points nationally, the model expects to see narrower leads — along with some polls showing a tie or Trump slightly ahead in the more red-leaning swing states: 
   
   ADJUSTED POLLING AVERAGE STATE AUG. 14 AUG. 31 Arizona +1.6 -3.9 Colorado +10.5 +6.1 Florida +6.3 +3.1 Georgia +0.7 -2.3 Iowa +5.0 +0.7 Michigan +11.8 +6.0 Minnesota +12.6 +7.7 Nevada +4.2 +0.8 New Hampshire +9.0 +4.2 North Carolina +5.5 +1.2 Ohio +6.4 +2.7 Pennsylvania +9.3 +4.8 Virginia +9.1 +7.1 Wisconsin +12.6 +4.8 Clinton’s projected leads have shrunk in swing states 
   
   Keep in mind that these numbers are self-correcting. For instance, the model expects new Ohio polls to show Clinton ahead by 2 or 3 percentage points, provided they don’t have a strong Trump-leaning or Clinton-leaning house effect. If new surveys deviate significantly from that range, the model will adjust itself accordingly. But usually this method gets things about right. Swing states are swing states for a reason — they closely follow the overall national trend. 
   
   The other thing to notice about Clinton’s swing state polls is that they aren’t especially strong (or weak) relative to her national polls. At her post-convention peak, Clinton’s path of least resistance to 270 electoral votes appeared to run through a set of states that included Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, among others. But in Pennsylvania, the most recent polls have Clinton ahead by margins ranging from 3 to 8 percentage points — perfectly fine, but not that different from her national numbers. We haven’t gotten much data recently from New Hampshire, but it can be swingy, and the most recent numbers from the Ipsos poll (caveat: very small sample size) showed Trump ahead. We did get some high-quality polls from Wisconsin, and, as I mentioned, they weren’t that good for Clinton. 
   
   Overall, Clinton’s leads in the tipping-point states — the ones most likely to determine the Electoral College winner in a close election — average about 4 percentage points, close to her numbers in national polls. 
   
   With a tighter race, the model’s expectations for Clinton are lower. A new poll showing her up by 5 or 6 points in Florida or Ohio — which would have been a ho-hum result a few weeks ago — could be a terrific one for her today, depending on the pollster. ||||| The plan to get to 270 electoral votes remains unclear. The battleground state deployment plan is a work in progress. Money from big donors is slowing to a trickle. And aides are confused about who’s calling the shots. 
   
   Donald Trump’s campaign is teetering, threatening to collapse under the weight of a candidate whose personality outweighs his political skill. And now, with 22 days until the start of early voting, the GOP nominee is running short on his most precious commodity: time. 
   
   Story Continued Below 
   
   Late last week, with Labor Day and the final stretch of the 2016 campaign approaching, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Republican National Committee brass — including chief of staff Katie Walsh and political director Chris Carr — in New York City. Kushner, who has in many respects assumed the role of campaign manager, asked a series of direct questions to the GOP officials — all surrounding the troubles the party was having in deploying field staffers, opening up swing-state headquarters, and establishing field offices in battlegrounds that will decide the election. 
   
   Those present for the meeting, and those briefed on it, insisted there were no fireworks, no drag-out fights. But they said Kushner’s questions reflected a growing realization within Trump’s team that for all the party’s talk about implementing a major swing-state deployment plan, it hasn’t yet materialized. 
   
   For weeks, Republican officials and operatives have groused about a dearth of campaign infrastructure in battlegrounds across the country — a state of affairs that could have an impact on GOP candidates up and down the ballot. But like many aspects of the Trump campaign, the deployment plan has been wracked by confusion, false starts and a lack of quick decision-making. On Aug. 18, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, came to Trump’s Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters for a day of meetings. He left ready to finalize a series of decisions. 
   
   But the next morning, Manafort, under withering scrutiny surrounding his work overseas, abruptly quit. His departure created a chain reaction, delaying the talks for days on end. By late August, finger-pointing had begun: In interviews, a Trump aide accused the RNC of slow-walking the process, while RNC officials blamed the lag on dysfunction within the campaign. 
   
   Trump’s son Eric, who has expressed impatience to party officials about progress being made in battleground states, on Monday made a pilgrimage to RNC headquarters in hopes of expediting the delayed field programs. 
   
   The RNC shrugged off any talk of tension with the Trump campaign. “The RNC and the Trump campaign have a good working relationship,” said Lindsay Walters, a committee spokeswoman. “We are coordinating on all fronts as we work towards victory in November.” 
   
   The absence of a clear plan has spread to something even more fundamental — the campaign’s path to 270 electoral votes. 
   
   In mid-August, Trump’s campaign team gathered with RNC officials at the candidate’s Washington, D.C.-area office to discuss the swing-state map and a deployment plan that would make their difficult Electoral College math work. 
   
   According to three people present, Trump’s chief pollster, Tony Fabrizio, laid out a path that required the team to divide states into four tiers — with Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania sitting in Tier One. In the next were Arizona and North Carolina, which Mitt Romney carried but where Democrats are hoping to compete this time around. There were also Nevada and Iowa, which Democrats won in 2012 but where Trump is running competitively. 
   
   The third tier included traditionally conservative states — Georgia, Missouri and Indiana — that Trump would need to keep an eye on. In the final tier were a half-dozen states, including Michigan, Virginia and New Hampshire, that President Barack Obama won four years ago. Whether to invest resources into those states would depend on costs, the strength of Trump’s campaign in each of those states and an autumn assessment of the potential for a win. 
   
   To those present, the plan was persuasive — and seemed to offer a coherent blueprint for the campaign to allocate resources. Yet, two weeks later and 20 days from the start of early voting, it’s not clear the plan is being implemented. In recent days, Trump has campaigned in Mississippi and Washington state — neither of which are seen as remotely competitive. 
   
   Making matters tough for Trump has been the ongoing reluctance of the party’s biggest contributors to open their wallets. In some cases, they are expressing profound misgivings about the Republican nominee. Last month, during a gathering of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s donor network in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Annie Dickerson, a Republican giver who also serves as top adviser to GOP megadonor and Trump critic Paul Singer, spoke up. During one panel discussion, discussion turned to an often-asked question in Republican circles: Whether not backing Trump would ultimately lead to the election of Hillary Clinton — and regret. 
   
   That’s when Dickerson chimed in: Trump, she said, has to be more accountable for himself. For Trump to blame everyone from the media to major donors to the establishment meant that he wasn’t placing the right amount of responsibility on himself, she said. 
   
   The billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch also have refused to come around. After the Republican National Convention, the Kochs invited their friends and allies to a retreat in Colorado Springs, Colorado. There, Doug Deason, the son of Texas billionaire Darwin Deason, tried to persuade Charles Koch to have a meeting with the nominee. In an interview, Deason recalled telling Koch that he could influence Trump’s policies. But Koch was having none of it. His response: “I just don’t see the upside.” 
   
   The antipathy has had far-reaching consequences. More than a month after Trump was nominated in Cleveland, the committee tasked with funding the convention remains in debt, according to three sources briefed on its finances. Organizers struggled to raise cash from major contributors and companies, many of them leery of Trump’s candidacy. (In July, just days before the start of the convention, the committee sent a letter to Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson pleading to him for a $6 million infusion.) 
   
   Some Republicans believe the party’s most prominent contributors have simply moved on and will focus their remaining giving on competitive House and Senate races. 
   
   “Overwhelmingly the donors that I talk to are focused on protecting the House and saving the majority in the Senate,” said Spencer Zwick, a Ryan political adviser who is one of the most prominent fundraisers in Republican politics. 
   
   Not all is lost. As the campaign enters its final months, some things have improved — perhaps most notably, Trump’s temperament and ability to stick to the script. During an August fundraising stop in Texas, Trump held forth before donors at a luncheon in Fort Worth, and vowed to stick with his new, more-on-message approach. 
   
   “He’s turned the corner. He’s sharpened the message and staying on message. He’s not attacking Republicans and minorities, and he’s letting the media focus on Clinton and her problems,” said Deason, who was present at the Texas fundraiser. 
   
   Recent swing state and national polling has shown Trump closing the gap with Clinton, who’s endured days of negative headlines surrounding her email practices and her family’s foundation. 
   
   “The campaign has made tremendous strides over the last several weeks,” said Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman. “Mr. Trump is working harder than ever, we’re seeing greater crowds than ever before. Crooked Hillary Clinton continues to be a walking ethics nightmare to the extent she bothers to show up on the campaign trail at all. Additionally, it has been 271 days since Hillary Clinton held a press conference.” 
   
   Other improvements are also in the works. Following a multitude of on-air slip-ups from Trump television surrogates that resulted in a series of embarrassing headlines, some advisers — which, according to one source included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — urged the campaign to alter the process for determining who is allowed to represent the campaign on TV news programs. Greater control of surrogates, they concluded, was a must — and freelancing simply couldn’t happen anymore. 
   
   On Wednesday evening, Bryan Lanza, a Trump press aide who oversees the surrogate operation, sent an email to staff informing them that changes were coming. 
   
   “We are having too many issues of surrogates booking their media hits independently,” Lanza wrote, adding that surrogates now needed to contact him before going on air. “I will take care of all your booking needs. PLEASE DO NOT BOOK ON YOUR OWN ANYMORE.” 
   
   But with just over two months until the election, Trump’s campaign remains transitory and unstable. Staffers describe a confusing work environment, with a constant lack of clarity about who’s in charge. To some, it's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and CEO Steve Bannon. Others say it's Kushner and other members of the Trump family. Others say that, in the end, it’s Trump himself who’s calling the shots. 
   
   Even keeping track of who’s working for the campaign at any given moment can be a challenge. In recent weeks, several aides who’d been advising Trump are no longer playing formal roles. They include Mike McSherry, a veteran party strategist who worked on the convention, and Doug Davenport, a longtime lobbyist who helped with the convention and Trump’s Pennsylvania primary effort. Rick Gates, who was Manafort’s top deputy, is also expected to soon depart, according to three sources familiar with his plans — even though on Aug. 19, the day Manafort resigned, the campaign announced that Gates would be serving as Trump’s liaison to the RNC. (Gates did not respond to requests for comment.) 
   
   Some say the campaign narrowly avoided an exodus last month. Following Manafort’s departure, he personally appealed to those he brought on not to leave and to give the new leadership team, led by Conway and Bannon, a chance. 
   
   Republicans say Trump still has time — but not much. 
   
   “It’s hard to see how the Trump campaign gets to 270 where they are today,” said Russ Schriefer, a veteran strategist of presidential campaigns who served as a senior adviser to Romney in 2012. “It’s not impossible, but it would take some external factor and some very lucky breaks for that to happen.” 
   
   “They have to reset the entire race and the entire dynamic,” he added. “They have a lot of things left to do and a very short amount of time left to do it.”
target: – Donald Trump is planning another trip outside his comfort zone with a visit to an African-American church in Detroit on Saturday, and he wasn't planning on taking any risks, according to a leaked script seen by the New York Times. The script contains a dozen questions that Bishop Wayne T. Jackson of Great Faith Ministries International was apparently planning to ask Trump in a closed-door session—and, more unusually for such an appearance, lengthy prepared answers for Trump. "I treasure my relationship with my family, and through them, I have a strong faith enriched by an ever-wonderful God," was Trump's prepared answer for a question about whether he is a Christian. "I want to make race disappear as a factor in government and governance," Trump was directed to say after a question about his vision for black Americans. After the script was leaked, a Trump campaign spokesman said the agenda has now changed and Trump plans to speak to the congregation directly after his interview session with the pastor. In other coverage: The Detroit Free Press looks at the uphill struggle Trump will have in order to win votes in Detroit, where Mitt Romney got just 2% of the vote in 2012. Some analysts believe the real purpose of Trump's visit is to show moderate Republicans elsewhere that he is willing to reach out to different groups of voters. The Washington Post analyzes Trump's latest proposals on immigration, and finds that immigration enforcement costs would leap by more than $50 billion over the next few years in order to put his plan into action. Politico looks at the state of the Trump campaign with 22 days to go before early voting begins. There has been some progress in areas including getting the candidate to stay on-message, but the campaign remains "transitory and unstable," with many aides unsure who is calling the shots. At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver notes that the race is tightening as it nears the home stretch—and warns that Clinton supporters are mistaken if they think the electoral college math will save her if it continues to tighten. The Wall Street Journal reports that in his big immigration speech in Arizona Wednesday, Trump had originally planned to avoid mentioning a border wall. He changed his mind and added a line about Mexico paying for the wall after finding out that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had told reporters that he told Trump Mexico wouldn't pay. "I had no choice," Trump, who thought they had an agreement not to discuss the wall at their first meeting, tells the Journal. Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani was at the meeting and says that when Peña Nieto declared Mexico wasn't going to pay, he said: "That's off the table" and the talks moved to another subject.