An unusual number of voters are still undecided

If Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's last ditch campaign stops in swing states like Florida and Ohio seem like an exercise in futility this close to Election Day, think again. Compared to 2012, the percentage of voters who apparently intend to make a game-day decision is remarkably high.

In fact, about "13 percent of the electorate says it's undecided or will vote for a third-party candidate, as compared with just 3 percent in the final 2012 polling average," as Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight explains.

Silver cites those figures in the context of a broader discussion of this election's uncertainty: At this point in 2012, his "polls-plus" forecast gave Mitt Romney just a 9 percent chance of victory over Barack Obama. Right now, that same model gives Donald Trump a 35 percent shot at beating Hillary Clinton. Indeed, the race has so tightened that by Silver's calculations, "Clinton has 268 electoral votes in states where she's clearly ahead in the polls — two short of the 270 she needs."

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Silver's map is more conservative than most, yet other current forecasts similarly see Clinton maintaining her lead, but not by the comfortable margin she enjoyed for much of the race.