The Anatomy of a Swing State – Harris vs. Trump – Election Day
Bottom Line: It’s Election Day. We’ll start with an overview of where Trump stands today in polling against Harris compared to where he stood on Election Day 2020 against Biden using the RealClear Politics polling average nationally.
- Election Day 2016: Clinton 2.1%
- Election Day 2020: Biden +7.2%
- Election Day 2024: Harris +0.1%
For five weeks leading up to Election Day the general polling trends favored Donald Trump. He ends this cycle essentially at polling parity in the national popular vote with Harris. If you knew nothing else about today’s election other than this, that Donald Trump is running 7.1% better than when he lost four years ago, but also 2% better than when he won the election eight years ago – you'd have a strong sense of how the former president is positioned heading into Election Day. Clearly Donald Trump is running well ahead of where he was in the polls four years ago in his loss to Joe Biden and where he was eight years ago in his win over Hillary Clinton.
These are the states that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won by 7.1% or less in 2020:
- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska’s 2nd District, New Hampshire, Nevada, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin
Those are currently the key swing states to watch. The expectation would be that Trump would be able to retain the states he won four years ago with the question being whether he’d be able to flip enough swing states back his way to win the election.
As of today, the RealClear average of state polls shows...
- Harris leading in: Nebraska’s 2nd District, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin
- Trump leading in: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania
As a result, this is what the electoral college breakout looks like in this Election Day update... Trump leading 287 to 251. The change since the previous update was to Kamala Harris’s benefit as Wisconsin moved back into her column. Still, the outright polling averages show Trump positioned to win the presidential election for the first time in his three presidential campaigns.
When accounting for how the polls performed in each of these states in the prior two presidential elections here’s what we see:
- Trump has performed in line with what the polls have suggested would happen in Arizona.
- Trump has underperformed his polling in Georgia and Nevada
- Trump has outperformed his polling in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
If the polls perform similarly this cycle compared to how they’ve performed the prior two cycles Harris would carry Nevada with Trump carrying the other five states. Adjusted for the margin of error in the polls previously, Trump picks up Michigan and Wisconsin resulting in an outcome that replicates the 2016 election outcome with Trump winning 306 to 232.
What this illustrates is that Donald Trump is well positioned to win the presidential election in what appears to be a margin slightly smaller than his 2016 victory on the low end and in line with his 2016 victory at the mid-point in projections. In a wave election result, all in-play states would likely break Trump’s way as well result in a 327 to 211 margin. Based on how turnout goes today I show outcomes as slim at 271-267 for Trump to 312-226 as likely. Based on my final Anatomy of a Swing analysis for the 2024 election cycle, Donald Trump is likely to be the 47th president of the United States.