We are exactly one month out from Election Day, and if anything, the race is about as stable as it has been for the past two months.
Here are where the swing states stand according to 538’s polling averages as of Friday at 1:45 PM ET.
The polling won’t perfectly predict this year’s election results, but if Democratic nominee Kamala Harris were to take every state where she currently leads, she would win the election with a narrow 276-262 electoral votes.
However, swing the election 1.5 percentage points to Donald Trump, and he wins 287-251. Then again, swing things 1.5 points toward Harris, and she wins every swing state, netting 319-219 electoral votes. It’s a wild one. And as I’ve noted time and again, much will depend on turnout.
Remember, pollsters are pretty good at determining how a demographic will vote, but they can only make educated guesses at how much of those demographics will turn out. For example, I can tell you that over 90% of Black women will no doubt vote for Harris, while around 60% of white men will likely vote for Trump. (That basically mirrors 2020 exit polls.) But there’s a big difference if Black women are 8% of the electorate or 12%, and an even bigger difference if white men are 35% of the electorate or 30%.
Well-meaning pollsters use historical trends to build their models. Partisan right-wing pollsters will put their thumbs on the scale to deliver better results for their candidates.
That’s all to say, if we get traditional turnout this November, it’ll be a very close race. But what if we don’t?
Odds are good that we won’t. In 2016, we were blindsided by a nihilistic white rural electorate motivated by Trump’s “burn it down” message. In 2020, the resistance pulled off record turnout from women and young voters, and the Democratic ticket got 15 million more votes than in 2016. And even then, Trump somehow managed to squeeze out an extra 11 million votes. It’s one reason he can’t possibly fathom losing: He turned out millions of additional voters in 2020. It should’ve been enough to win.
But this year, are there another 11 million votes for Trump somewhere?
There certainly are more potential votes for Harris, as our voting demographics consistently underperform Republican ones. Can we get them out?
In a normal year, this election would be very close. But it is now up to us to make it a not-normal year.
The trends are in our favor. A good ground game can be worth 2-3 points, and the Harris campaign’s got a good ground game. Republicans put all their get-out-the-vote eggs in sketch baskets, such as relying on Elon Musk’s America PAC, and if we’re to believe Republican freakouts, that’s not going so well.
“A Michigan-based GOP strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, described the party’s challenge bluntly: ‘They are out-matching us in money, in enthusiasm and in the ground game,’” reported Politico.
On Wednesday, I wrote about a slew of battleground state polls by BSG and GS Strategy Group for The Cook Political Report. The toplines look great for Harris—she holds a narrow lead in six of seven swing states—but more excitingly, the underlying dynamics of the race are moving in our direction. The candidates are tied when it comes to whom voters trusted more to deal with inflation, and Trump’s advantage on immigration has shrunk by 5 points since August, though he still leads Harris by 9 points on the issue. Those should be Trump’s two strongest issues, right?
And even more importantly, Trump’s ceiling—i.e., his highest possible share of the electorate—appears intact. Between 2016 and 2020, he never reached 47% of the national popular vote, and that inability to grow out of his core base is a liability in those battlegrounds.
“One of the most important—and enduring—political questions for Trump is whether he can expand his appeal, or if he has a hard ‘ceiling’ of support,” wrote Cook’s Amy Walter and Jessica Taylor. “As we saw in 2016 and 2020, Trump has been unable to break 49% of the vote in some of the most important swing states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. This poll gives some credence to the theory that his support is fixed. Since May, Trump’s overall share of the vote has barely budged (47-48%), even as Harris has been able to improve on Biden’s share by five points (44-49%).”
In other words, Harris is moving up while Trump is stuck. And he’s certainly not doing anything to change that dynamic, spending all his media time preaching to the choir on Fox News, Newsmax, and right-wing podcasts. He’s chickened out of both additional debates and going on “60 Minutes,” which regularly interviews presidential candidates before an election. His rallies are snoozefests that appear to barely motivate even his most rabid supporters. And on substance, they’re a disaster.
And Florida wants to tease us again. Trump’s lead in 538’s average is just 4.0 points, including a right-wing RMG Research poll that shows him ahead by only 2 points. It’s probably too late for Harris to make a serious play for the Sunshine State, and she doesn’t need it. But the closer it gets at the presidential level, the better our chances are at winning a Senate seat there.
In short, the polling is scary close, but the underlying dynamics favor Harris—on the assumption that we’re out-hustling the other side.
What are you doing to get out the vote?
You can help turn out the vote for the election by simply chatting to your neighbors. This is a cool one! Click here to sign up for Daily Kos/Indivisible’s Neighbor2Neighbor get-out-the-vote program.
