The Anatomy of a Swing State – Harris vs. Trump – September 18th
Bottom Line: We’re now under 7 weeks away from Election Day having had what’s likely to be the last presidential debate of this cycle. Voting is now also getting underway in multiple states.
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 2020: Biden +7.2%
- September 17th, 2024: Harris +1.7%
We’re now a full week removed from the presidential debate and the impact in the polls has begun to be felt. There are a total of eight national pollsters who’ve conducted polls containing at least some sampling after the debate. Six of those pollsters have samples that were entirely taken after the debate. What’s clear in the early going is that the potential impact of the debate wasn’t significant – one way or another. A week ago, Harris held a 1.1% lead in the RealClear Politics national polling average. As of yesterday, that advantage was 1.7%. We’ll have a full picture of the potential debate impact on polls over the next week. As of now what we see is that Donald Trump is running an average of 5.5 points better today than he was on Election Day 2020.
These are the states that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won by 5.5% or less in 2020:
- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin
Those are currently the key swing states to watch as of this week. 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.
Since Harris’ assent to the top-of-the ticket Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia have moved from potential swing state status back into likely states for Democrats prior to this week’s changes. With each of those changes the path to victory expands for Kamala Harris as it narrows for Donald Trump.
As of today, the RealClear average of state polls shows...
- Harris retaining: Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin
- Trump flipping: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania
There is one significant change this week. Pennsylvania, which may be the most pivotal swing state of this cycle, moved from a tie to a Trump pickup once again. As a result, this is what the electoral college breakout looks like: Trump leading 281 to 257.
If you account 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 and Georgia based on current polling, however Trump would carry Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Adjusted for the margin of error in the polls previously, Trump is shown with a 290-248 vote advantage currently.
What this illustrates is that a week after the presidential debate, and within seven weeks of Election Day, former President Donald Trump is positioned to win this race if the polls prove to be accurate and also if they perform similarly to the prior two cycles – though the race remains extremely tight.