The Anatomy of a Swing State – Harris vs. Trump – October 16th
Bottom Line: We’re now under 3 weeks away from 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 2020: Biden +7.2%
- October 15th, 2024: Harris +1.4%
For a third straight week Donald Trump has made gains against Harris’ lead in the national polls. A momentum swing in this race appears to be apparent as we’re now under three weeks away from Election Day. Donald Trump is consistently running well ahead of where he was in the polls four years ago (10.8%) in his loss to Joe Biden and where he was eight years ago in his win over Hillary Clinton (8.1%)
As of now what we see is that Donald Trump is running an average of 5.8% points better today than he was on Election Day 2020.
These are the states that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won by 5.8% 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: Wisconsin
- Trump flipping: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania
There is a significant change for a third straight week as yet another swing state has moved from Harris to Trump. After Michigan and Pennsylvania moved into Trump’s column over the previous two weeks, it’s Nevada which has made the move this week. It’s the first time Trump has led in those three states at the same time since Kamala Harris became the Democrat’s presumptive nominee. As a result, this is what the electoral college breakout looks like: Trump leading 302 to 236.
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 312-226 vote advantage currently.
What this illustrates is that within the final three weeks of this campaign, the race appears to be somewhere between a win for Trump with a margin slightly below his 2016 margin of victory, to a slightly more comfortable win than was won in 2016.