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102 days: Now, the sprint to November

102 days.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. (Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK)

102 days.

More than a year after Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump announced their presidential campaigns, and after months of bitter primaries that took unexpected turns in both parties, the sprint to November has started.

Trump "wants to divide us from the rest of the world, and from each other," Clinton warned in her acceptance address Thursday night, receiving tumultuous cheers from most in the hall but jeers from a few dozen supporters of her primary rival, Bernie Sanders. "We have to decide whether we all will work together so we all can rise together."

In the wake of back-to-back political conventions, here are three things we've learned about the political landscape that Clinton and Trump will be running on in the most unpredictable election in a generation.

1. It's this/close

In national polls, it's a tie — at least for now.

That may be a bit misleading, since Trump got a bounce from the Republican convention last week while any bounce from the Democratic convention, which ended Thursday night with Clinton's speech and a display of fireworks at the Walls Fargo Center here, hasn't had a chance to be measured.

That said, the most recent nationwide polls averaged by RealClearPolitics.com put Trump at 45.6%, Clinton at 44.7%, a difference of less than a single percentage point. In the nation's two quintessential swing states, the contest is even closer. In Florida: Trump 43.8%-Clinton 43.5%. In Ohio: Trump 41.8%-Clinton 42.6%.

Senior Democrats are expressing the same bewilderment that Trump's Republican rivals did during the primaries over the billionaire businessman's ability to build support without a classic campaign infrastructure and despite provocative statements and misstatements that would undermine a conventional candidate. His comments at a news conference Wednesday urging Russia to spy on Clinton's emails are the latest example; on Thursday, he said he was being sarcastic.

Some can't quite believe the race is so competitive.

"Donald Trump's getting 15% of the Latino vote ... and in the two Quinnipiac polls, he got zero African-American votes in Pennsylvania and Ohio," Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and Democratic national chairman, said Thursday at a breakfast with reporters hosted by Bloomberg Politics. "He's getting clobbered among women. He's losing college-age white men by 10 points. And somebody please tell me how he's even or in the margin of error."

2. Fasten the Rust Belt

Back to basics. A half-dozen familiar states are likely to provide the battlegrounds for the fall.

Trump's no-room-for-error path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House likely begins with a trio of industrialized states that loop around the Great Lakes — Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania — and are home to many of the working-class white voters who have been drawn to his message of economic grievance and revival. If he can carry them, hold the reliably red states and add Florida (no easy task), Trump wins.

Clinton has more options. She starts with a larger number of electoral votes from reliably blue states. If she can carry Colorado and Virginia, swing states that have been heading in her direction, and then add either Florida or Ohio, she wins.

In her acceptance speech, she appealed to the working-class voters from the industrialized states who form the core of Trump's support. "Democrats are the party of working people, but we haven't done a good enough job showing that we get what you're going through, and that we're going to do something about it," she said, promising to push through Congress the biggest jobs and investment bill since World War II.

Trump asserts he might compete in such traditionally Democratic states as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California. "States like Connecticut have come into play," top Trump strategist Paul Manafort insists. "The same issues that are resonating in Pennsylvania and in Ohio resonate in Connecticut."

Democrats mock that idea. "I absolutely encourage Donald Trump to spend time campaigning in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey," Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook responds sarcastically.

But Mook also discounts the idea that Clinton will compete seriously in such traditionally Republican states as Arizona, Georgia and Texas. "Georgia is going to be a battleground state; it's just a question of when," he said Wednesday at a luncheon hosted by The Wall Street Journal. He suggests that may not happen until 2020 or 2024. "Arizona is probably in a similar category; I think it's a little bit behind. Look, people talk about Texas all the time, I think it's farther down the line but it is moving in that same trajectory."

Iowa and New Hampshire are likely battlegrounds this fall, though they offer only a handful of electoral votes. In the closest of contests, even the single electoral vote available in each of the two states that allocate them by congressional district could be the target of fierce campaigning.

Indeed, Trump already has campaigned in Bangor, in the Maine district Republicans might be able to win. And Clinton is scheduled to campaign Monday in Omaha, in the Nebraska district where Democrats have a shot.

3. It's not me. It's you

Clinton and Trump have starkly different résumés and political visions, but they share this: record-breaking unpopularity. A Gallup Poll taken last week found them with precisely equal, and equally dismal, ratings: 37% favorable, 58% unfavorable.

Both conventions included efforts to soften voters' views of them. Melania Trump and Bill Clinton spoke warmly of their spouses in prime-time speeches. Donald Trump was introduced on stage by daughter Ivanka; Hillary Clinton was introduced on stage by daughter Chelsea. At the Republican convention, Trump's business partner delivered a tribute. The Democratic convention featured a parade of individuals with stories about how Clinton had touched their lives.

But strategists acknowledge the difficulty of changing opinions about public figures who are so well known and so polarizing. For each, the crucial task is to make sure the alternative is seen as more unacceptable — that is, as the greater of two evils.

"To me, the key is the relationship between the two: More people have to find her acceptable and him unacceptable than vice versa," Democratic pollster Mark Mellman says. "She can do more to help herself than anyone else can, so that needs to be her Job One. But she doesn't have to really increase her favs. A voter can dislike her and find her at least acceptable."

Or at least less unacceptable than her rival is.

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