Harris Takes Lead
Hello again!
The State of the Race
Since our last update, the Democratic Ticket has been campaigning across the country working to extend their momentum from the past two weeks. The big news there is the unveiling of Tim Walz as Harris’s running mate. They’ve been touring the swing states since the announcement and drawing large enthusiastic crowds.
JD Vance has been following them across the country trying to draw comparisons between the two campaigns. It’s been lackluster. The comparison is not helping the Republicans.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been mostly absent from the campaign trail; with only one sparsely attended rally in Montana and a press conference. I haven’t watched the press conference yet so I’ll reserve comments for now. The Trump Campaign holding a rally in Montana is mystifying. That’s a move you make when you’re on a clear path to victory and you can afford to spend resources on a Senate seat. His campaign has bigger issues. Was it about trying to get a rally with good attendance for a visual to counter those coming out of the Harris campaign? A positive event to get Trump back on the trail?
The narrative around the debates is mystifying as well. Trump began making up a possible debate on Fox News even before he debated President Biden. But the waffling, then canceling the debate, then insisting on the made-up Fox News debate, and finally canceling again all made Trump look frightened. Making up another debate and then insisting on three debates is a weird thing to do and is too little, too late.
The Harris/Walz tour of the swing states wraps up Saturday in Nevada.
Results:
Once again we entered the polling data into our model and ran 40,000 simulated elections. If the election were held today, it looks like Donald Trump would have about a 35% chance of winning with Vice President Harris winning about 64% of the time. The remaining 1% were Electoral College ties.
Again, I would emphasize that this is an estimate. There weren’t many state polls in the last week and using our scheme had an interesting effect: it turned out that every state ‘average’ was determined by a single poll.
This had its greatest effect in Michigan as the one poll used there is probably an outlier (Harris led by 11), which would make the probability of a Harris victory an overestimate.
Given this data, Harris is in the lead and the odds of her winning the election could be as good as 3 to 2.
Our scheme for finding our polling averages and creating the map can be found here: Methodology.
Trends:
Trump was favored to win in our 21 July probability, and Harris pulled roughly even with him in our 31 July estimate. Now, for the moment, it’s safe to say that Harris has an edge. Strictly looking at the probabilities generated from the models, Harris’s probability of winning the election is roughly where Trump’s was on 21 July, between 63 and 64%. This is a complete turnaround in just under three weeks.
But that’s not the only evidence. Other predictive sites are showing similar results. Nate Silver now has Harris favored to win both the popular vote and the Electoral College. The New York Times/Siena College Poll released this morning has Harris leading Trump by 4 points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The Cook Political Report has reclassified the race in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.”
The momentum remains on Harris’s side.
Last Words
It’s beginning to look like the campaign is the Democrats’ to lose. They have been able to dominate the news cycle and generate enthusiasm since the Republican Convention with President Biden’s withdrawal, followed by Harris introducing herself, the party unifying behind her, and then the announcement of Walz as Harris’s running mate. This could easily continue as the Democratic Convention will lead to hearings about Trump’s January 6th Election Interference Case which will bring us into early voting.
The Trump Campaign still seems unable to find its footing. They continue to throw whatever they can against the Democrats but nothing yet has really stuck outside of their MAGA base. With Vance drawing tiny crowds and Trump largely off the campaign trail it’s hard to see how they can turn this around. Right now it’s easy to find headlines like “Trump Campaign Bleeding Support…” or “Is Trump ‘Losing His Marbles.’“
Still, this election could go either way. Even if the probability of Trump winning the election is really at 35% (and many sites have it higher) that’s still about 10% better than his chances of winning the 2016 election. In that election, he exceeded expectations at every turn. While the Republican Party’s overconfidence in July is partly responsible for the current state of the election other overconfidence could still shake things up dramatically.
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