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Alright everyone, 538 is back online after a month of inactivity!
With the US 2024 Presidential Election between sitting Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Donald J Trump coming up on November 5th, I figured I would feature this interactive map, which uses 538’s data. It provides a visual way to illustrate how either candidate can win the Electoral College.
Edit 3: unpinning this comment because it’s out of date.
With the US 2024 Presidential Election between ~~sitting President Joseph R. Biden~~ presumptive democrat nominee and sitting Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J Trump coming up on November 5th, I figured I would feature this interactive map, which uses 538’s data. It provides a visual way to illustrate how either candidate can win the Electoral College.
Edit: Sitting President Joe Biden suspended his candidacy as of July 19th, 2024. He will speak more about his reasons later this week, and he has endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to succeed him.
~~538 still shows Biden as the democrats presumptive nominee, but I expect that will change soon.~~
Edit 2: This election map still works, but as of July 21 at 2 p.m. Eastern, President Joe Biden has suspended his campaign for the 2024 Democratic Party nomination for president. 538 will publish an election forecast including the new presumptive Democratic nominee, when such nominee is announced.
Reminder: Every swing state in 2020 voted Red of the National Average. And it's a pretty sharp jump. (Michigan favored Biden by 2.8%, next state down was Minnesota was 7.11%. Nationally it was 4.5%). Meanwhile in 2016 only two states did, New Hampshire and Minnesota.(Meaning if Trump had flat won the popular vote in 2016 he'd only get those two states, albeit cutting Gary Johnson would move others).
If it's a Hillary level margin or closer, the historic data says Trump wins the electoral college. Biden level margin she wins. Hillary got 2.1% lead, Biden got 4.5% lead. 3% - 3.5% is the tipping point for the bulk states.
I should also note the evidence suggests the specific state margins may shift in order. Arizona is trending left, Nevada is trending right. Wisconsin is holding steady, Michigan is trending left, Pennsylvania slightly left(though recent events have masked it to a degree).
The good news is Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania is a knock out safe win. Tie proof. (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin isn't as if Nebraska switches it's law it would be a tie). Bad news is Wisconsin is the whitest of all the swing states(period), least educated of the 3 rust belt states, and aging. Biden(pre-debate) was doing better here than Harris is.
It also basically guarantees that if Harris doesn't break into the South we're in for a drag out election. Michigan is the bluest swing state, Georgia is the reddest, let's say North Carolina holds., but Arizona trends blue again. At that point Nevada literally does not matter, it's down to capturing Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Dems need both, Reps only need PA unless they lose Maine-2 and don't get Nebraska law. This sucks because Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are the two states who haven't tweaked their mail in laws, meaning it'll still be a multi day count.
The other dragout scenario is the Rep's breakthrough Arizona and get Nebraska law, but lose Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Then it's all down to Nevada and if the reds get it it's a tie vote. Nevada infamously counts slowly just in general.
Harris weakens the rust belt(Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) at the exchange of strengthening Arizona and getting a shot of taking the Southern states. We'll see how it pays off
You could argue this isn't a super fair metric as the reason the national average pulls left is that the Large Blue States (New York and California) are solidly blue, while the Large Red States (Texas and Florida) are two of the pinkest 'safe red' states alongside Ohio and Iowa. Blue States tend to be more solidly blue than Red States, especially in the big ones. A reverse Canada situation. It also doesn't account for third parties (which hurt Trump more in 2016 than in 2020, costing him 5 or 6 states in 2016 instead of only 2 or so in 2020).
But the former is unlikely to change this election(I don't see Florida or Texas tipping, the former is considered a money sink that's too risky this close to the election to fight for and the latter has very harsh voter laws. Even if they trended left again and Harris got Biden level margins they'd stay red by the skin of their teeth and that's unlikely) and the latter factor is actually trending in Trump's favor this time thanks mostly to a weakened and divided Libertarian base. So keep that in mind.
Biden winning by Hillary level popular vote margins in 2020 loses the election, carrying Michigan with Nevada too close to call. A 50/50 popular vote in 2020 flips the other two swing states and puts Nebraska 2 and Minnesota under high pressure.
There was a slight left ward trend overall even accounting for the national swing of 2.4 votes bluer than 201, but it wasn't by a lot. Adjusting for the nationals and comparing with that, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania trended slightly right, a point and a little over half a point respectively. Nevada swung so right it was bluer in 2016 even without adjusting for anything, with adjusting it's a 2 and a half point swing right. Arizona and Georgia both swung solidly to the left even accounting for Biden doing better, a point and a half and 3 points respectively. Michigan had a very slight left wing turn adjusted too. North Carolina is the closest, trending on parr with the nation, maybe a few hundred votes more Republican.
Effectively, assuming a tighter election with a smaller popular vote gap than 2020, Nevada is almost certainly going red (it's at least as red as Georgia or North Carolina if not redder thanks to Harris bumping the black vote). Georgia's trend is good and so is Harris being bumped to top ticket, but it's been a Republican spending ground for years and downballots don't help Harris as well as they did in 2020. Not to mention a potentially nasty third party line up if the judge gets overturned. North Carolina's tilt is more recent(a lot of the same factors as Georgia, but without the same counterbalance as it wasn't seen as in need of immediate GOP pushing), but it also was redder to start with by a few points and didn't swing as hard last time. In a best case Harris scenario where she gets Biden margins these could go blue(Biden was worse with black voters and better with whites, and here this helps), but it's unlikely as Georgia had it's momentum aggressively fought and NC is too late.
Neither Biden or Harris are doing fantastic with Hispanics, but they aren't really doing any worse than 2020. The state leans blue, but it's a very unstable blue that could be vulnerable to a shock event. (Trump would have won this state in 2020 without third parties). I also think there's a hard cap on how blue it can go, the rural whites are dug in.
Michigan is trending a bit blue, was already blue-est, very safe for Harris even accounting for a bit worse white performance.
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are the wildcards as it comes down heavily to how the VP picks help. Tim Walz is probably helping Wisconsin quite a bit, and MAYBE Pennsylvania to a lesser degree? Wisconsin is trending redder in the broad strokes demographic factors, but it's also got more specific 2024 factors helping it (namely Tim Walz). Pennsylvania gets higher spending and is more diverse, but Walz isn't as helpful there and Vance isn't really hated in rural PA compared to national standards.
Things could absolutely change and there are historic things to note (Nevada specifically tends to overpoll Red, Wisconsin specifically tends to overpoll blue, those two have been unusually bad these last two elections), and a few breakthroughs in the South could end this quickly in Harris's favor if she can court the black vote hard enough. Harris definitely has more fringe 'best case scenario' options thanks to that and if the unlikely ones happen that's that, see 2020 repeat. BUT this is probably going to be a tight one if the safe states and obvious trenders play out as expected(Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada Red, Michigan blue). Probably going to come down to Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
In the specific config I came up with, Pennsylvania since in this configuration that's the winning state for either party and the other two don't matter. Shift something however and that changes. Republicans lose North Carolina? Now they need Pennsylvania AND either Arizona or Wisconsin to win. Lose NC and Maine State 2? Now it has to be Arizona and Wisconsin is a tie(which favors R, but messy).
Or the inverse, Republicans take Arizona alongside the 3 likely ones. They just need 1 rust belt state and they're clean regardless of Maine, Dem's need to sweep the belt. Or, if Maine-2 stayed Red AND Nebraska-Omaha lost it's status and the state went winner take all(which it might), they could tie it up and thus score a House win without a single rust belt state period.
Also any race only decided by one or two electoral votes is vulnerable to faithless electors, the volatile Maine-2 race, and whether or not Nebraska changes it's EC laws to be WTA. If it comes down to a single nailbiter state with margins of a thousand or less expect Brooks Brothers style favoring of whichever party controls the state(slight edge to Republicans if the state is split).
I think Trump's gains with young men are the main area patching him back up and are what's mostly being missed when people ask how it's this close.
While it's true that Younger Generations are getting more Liberal, that trend is only extremely strong among women. It's a weak trend among men(and it really only works if you compare them directly to like, Boomers). Gen X males have been gradually shifting right compared to the Obama years, and Gen Z is just broadly more right wing than Millennials. Gender may legitimately be the biggest divider right now, only rivaled by Urban Rural.
Rural Male Gen Z isn't as left as many people would think.
These gains(plus slow steady gains among Latino blocs, mostly Cubans and old blood Tejano types) are making up for the losses in women voters he suffered in 2022 and 2016 and the loss in black voters thanks to Harris.
That and the right wing is slowly clawing back control of portions of the media. In the Aftermath of Gamergate most of the mainstream internet platforms swung hard to the left and several became fully controlled like Twitter and Tumblr. Thanks in part to several tech bro defections and bot operations places like Facebook slipped in 2020 and now Twitter and CNN follow. That was keeping most of the bitter young men who weren't involved in GG or Republicans prior in line with the democrats. With that control erroding they're starting to slip. We've seen this playout in South Korea before, who's gender political divide is among the nastiest worldwide among democracies.
Despite how close it is the most likely individual scenarios are still sweeps, as a small error one way or the other effectively cleans out. The 4 most likely scenarios are still 'Harris sweeps swing states', 'Trump sweeps swing states', 'Harris sweeps all, but Arizona or Georgia', Trump sweeps all, but Michigan'
This Election is giving me a lot of 2004 vibes for various reasons. Excluding the two Trump elections, it's probably the one closest overall.
There are a lot of reasons for this, and I don't just mean the Swiftboating 'and yes it's true I won it thrice' thing.
First off, just as a whole, the VP options Tim Walz and JD Vance give very similar vibes to Bush and Kerry in a lot of ways and are making a lot of the same arguments. (Some of JD's positions that are super fringe now were a bit less fringe in 2003-2004 and many Republicans then supported them. This was the peak of the family values Anti-Gay Marriage or civil unions period) Tim Walz is a nice white guy, but he isn't exactly a super charismatic. JD Vance is being made fun of for being a weird idiot, even to the degree of a bit of fabrication(Bush wasn't illiterate, JD Vance never fucked a couch).
Second of all the previous election was close and we're in an era of weak incumbents. Some degree of reversal here(Red's won in 2000, blue's in 2020), but due to Biden dropping out the red's actually have the incumbent candidate of sorts,
And also thirdly the Democrats are somewhat on the back foot candidate wise despite being the incumbent party. They're handling it better than 2004, but also had a better starting position so you be the judge. Both times there was a bit of a scramble for the nominee without the best pool or timing. (Al Gore had lost in 2000, running him again had been Plan A, but that wasn't viable. Hillary was a known upcoming blue candidate option, but she had just gotten her senator job and wasn't ready yet. JFK Jr. was also being courted to go after Al Gore when he was ready, but he died in 1999 in a plane crash. And Obama was only just getting into major politics.).
Sure you could also draw comparisons to the 1968 scramble (Where the incumbent dropped out, the obvious successor got murdered at the last minute, and they had to settle for Hubert), but there's also some 2004 vibes. A bit of both actually. Kamala is better known nationally than John Kerry and there wasn't an assassination on that side, but she also wasn't really seen as viable for the position due to being relatively far left and also not being personally super popular (that combination isn't super ideal, you can work one or the other, see Bernie and Biden, but both is harder). But due to timing there wasn't really a better option.
Also in terms of how close the election is and how long it takes to call I'm expecting 2004 margins. 2004 was electorally margin wise closer than 2016 or 2020, and the winner won the popular vote. 2004 was called around 10-11 AM the next day(depending on time zone), compared to 2 AM in 2016, before midnight basically every other year (11 PM for 2012), and 3 or 4 days later in 2020. A lot of pollsters, most of them actually as of late, are saying to expect a closer election than either of the previous two, and that there's a pretty high chance of the Electoral College and Popular Vote agreeing. Still quite a bit higher than the pre-2016 world where it supposed to be like a 1 in 30 event (Now it's 1 in 3 and it was even higher the previous two), but still. If it doesn't come down to a tight race in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin we'll probably know the results early the day after, as a ton of other states changed their mail in counting laws to prevent another 2020. (Although it almost certainly will. The Democrats would have to sweep everything that isn't Georgia and Trump would have to sweep the non-Rust belt and get the Nebraska law passed for those two states to not matter and both outcomes are super unlikely.) If Harris wins she'll probably win the popular vote, and if Trump wins he still very well could mostly because Solid Blue State turnout is almost certainly going to drop off a bit for many reasons, not to mention there isn't a strong Libertarian this time.
Also, while the democrats are the incumbent Party, Trump is moreso the incumbent candidate which comes with advantages and disadvantages(though the fact Covid only broke out during the last 6 months before the election is interesting timing. Trump was there when it started and Democrats love to use that, but more people died after the election than before and more Pandemic time total happened under Biden).
Heck, if you buy the 13 keys, while they do predict a Harris win, this specific combination is extremely volatile. 5 False, 8 True is a rare rare Combo, it's only happened 4 times...including both 1888 and 2000. Whoops. Also as I noted the Incumbency Key really just, does not handle this sort of thing well. Rematches are rare(hey Aldi Stevenson), a rematch between two former presidents one term each (which we almost had) is unheard of. Now we've got the Incumbent Party on one side and an Incumbent Candidate on the other, a knowable party platform and a knowable person platform .If the keys fail, it'll either be because of that unique situation, or because they have a rough track record with minor third parties in tight races (1996 and 1948 had third parties, big enough to flip the key false, but that was required to get it to 5 keys, they weren't already there. Truman was holding his own fine even with that, and Clinton arguably moreso. Meanwhile 1888 and 2000 didn't flip the key, but notably the third party roster those years leaned against the eventual loser, so there's evidence in a close race third parties can sway things even if none of them crack the 5% margins).
There's a lot of elements of prior elections here. Trump is not in office and is running against a middling historic popularity woman who isn't in office, just like in 2016. Trump has a lot of baggage, but also some good times to point at, just like in 2020. A ton of specific elements being argued about, aspects of the line up, and the general rushed and imperfect Democrat pick vibes all fit 2004. And of course, the nominee violence, DNC protests in Chicago, and general issues with last minute changes fits 1968. We shall see.
also can't believe i forgot to mention this, but perceived flip flopping
Also, I personally feel the Electoral College is archaic and was built upon the principal of inequality. It is also the only reason George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump even got elected in the first place; neither had the popular vote.
I could write an entire essay on how the US and the world would be better off without the Electoral College, but I would just be preaching to the choir and probably nobody would bother reading it (lol.)
The Electoral College failed its purpose in 2016
I'll be keeping a close eye on how quickly the cyan and pink states on the East Coast get called(New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio) get called, as well as which swing state gets called first(propotionally, adjusting an hour or so to account for when they start counting). If Georgia or (proportionally) Arizona gets called first, that's a strong sign for Trump. Michigan or Wisconsin(Michigan proportionally) strong sign for Harris.
Pollsters have been solid on the actual locked in voters the previous years, so this is coming down to the undecideds. Harris has a ground game edge, but the third party sphere has shifted against her compared to prior years and her shorter campaign is a bottleneck.