The Anatomy of a Swing State – Harris vs. Trump – September 25th
Bottom Line: We’re now under 6 weeks away from Election Day having had what’s likely to be the last presidential debate of this cycle. Voting is now also 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 25th, 2024: Harris +2.2%
We’re over two weeks removed from the presidential debate and there are two trends that have come into focus. First, Harris has received about a one-point boost in national polls following the debate. Second, the boost hasn’t translated into similar performance in the especially important swing states. Trump is consistently running well ahead of where he was in the polls four years ago in his loss to Joe Biden, and slightly ahead of where he was eight years ago in his win over Hillary Clinton.
As of now what we see is that Donald Trump is running an average of 5 points better today than he was on Election Day 2020.
These are the states that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won by 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, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin
- Trump flipping: Arizona, Georgia
There is one significant change this week. Pennsylvania, which may be the most pivotal swing state of this cycle, moved from a Trump flip to a Harris hold once again. That was largely influenced by a Quinnipiac poll that was especially favorable for Harris and may prove to be an outlier. As a result, this is what the electoral college breakout looks like: Harris leading 276 to 262.
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 306-232 vote advantage currently.
What this illustrates is that within the final six weeks of this campaign, the race appears to be somewhere between a very narrow win for Harris, to a slightly more comfortable win for former President Donald Trump that would be consistent with his electoral college advantage in 2016.