Consolidations and a bit of a Debate Bump
Let’s get right to it. This is the first time since 14 August that one of the candidates had led in a victorious number of electoral votes.
The State of the Race
It’s been another crazy week.
It turns out that the happening at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach wasn’t random passersby engaging in gunplay. There was someone with an AK-47 at the edge of the golf course as Trump approached the fifth hole. The only gunfire though came from the Secret Service. The perpetrator was quickly apprehended. This is certainly an incident, but lots of folks are stopping short of calling it an “assassination attempt.”
Most of the polls this week have been very helpful for Vice President Harris. In fact, of the 12 polls that showed up on electoral-vote.com on Thursday, Donald Trump only led in one. There was a tied result in Pennsylvania, and the rest favored Harris. We could be seeing a debate bump finally taking hold.
In light of this, we notice that there has been a spate of anti-democratic stories this week. The Georgia elections board has mandated that ballot be counted by hand. That will grind the process to a halt and create chaos. In Ohio, the Secretary of State has written a very misleading description of an anti-gerrymandering amendment that will be up for a vote. And Senator Lindsay Graham has gone to Nebraska in hopes of convincing their legislature to switch the way, they allocate electoral votes to a winner-take-all system. Part of running a free and fair election involves not changing the rules late in the game, making this Nebraska thing seem like dirty pool. There’s more that I’ll leave you to hunt down.
Results:
As always we ran 40,000 simulations of the election as though it were being held today based on this week’s polling data from electoral-vote.com. Harris won 75% of these simulations, Trump won 24% and the remaining 1% were tied. In other words, it looks like the odds of Harris winning the election are at 3 to 1.
You can understand why Lindsay Graham went to Nebraska. If this map is correct, even if Donald Trump were to win every state marked as a tossup Harris would win 270 to 268. Changing how Nebraska allocates its electoral votes turns it into a 269 to 269 tie.
Probably not though because Harris is slightly ahead in Nevada and North Carolina. If we add in how the tossup states lean, this becomes a victory for Harris 292 to 246 EV.
That’s not a great way of looking at it though because in addition to the tossup states, the light blue and light red states are all close to or inside the margin of error. That excludes Oregon. We only have one poll from Oregon and it’s not as light blue as it seems.
The optimum way of looking at this might be Harris: 226, Trump: 189. Harris’s 3 to 1 odds notwithstanding this could still go either way.
Trends:
Digging in state-by-state, we can see that the bulk of the shifts this week are good news for Vice-President Harris. Let’s start with the states that have a redshift.
| State | Change |
|---|---|
| Indiana | Leaning Republican to Strongly Republican |
| Maine 2nd | Leaning Democratic to Leaning Republican |
| Maine | Strongly Democratic to Leaning Democratic |
| Virginia | Strongly Democratic to Leaning Democratic |
Like Colorado and Arkansas last week, the shift in Indiana doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. Last week’s result was based on one that was months old and just didn’t capture how red Indiana really is.
The shift in Maine’s second district is a big one, but it puts the Maine 2nd more or less back where it had been before the previous poll. That’s not really a surprise. Because of the change in the Maine 2nd, Maine as a whole seems a little less blue. Virginia’s shift is a small one right at the borderline between those two categories.
| State | Change |
|---|---|
| Iowa | Strongly Republican to Leaning Republican |
| Florida | Leaning Democratic to Barely Republican |
| Pennsylvania | Toss Up to Barely Democratic |
| New Hampshire | Leaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic |
| New Mexico | Leaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic |
| Rhode Island | Leaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic |
Looking at these states with a blue shift the one non-story here is Pennsylvania. That’s just a happy little dance within the margin of error.
Iowa though was a surprise. Donald Trump had an 18 point lead that shrunk to meager four points. The race in Florida, meanwhile has looked like it’s been tightening for a while. Perhaps it really is.
New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Rhode Island all could be the same story as Indiana. All of the states though have been polled multiple times; New Hampshire and New Mexico were looking downright swingy for a while. If these three are legitimately safely blue that frees up some resources that could be better used in, to pick a couple of states at random, Iowa and Florida.
Last Words
As much as I would rather continue to pontificate here, there is unfortunately other work I need to get to. We’ll check in again next week and see if these trends continue.
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