It has been 6 days since my last post.

Here comes the TL;DR:

The race remains about the same as it has been since the end of September. Things bounce around week to week based on the most recent polls in each state, but the overall picture has not changed.

Specifically, there are so many close states that the range of "unsurprising" results ranges from a healthy Harris win to a healthy Trump win in terms of the Electoral College. And everything in between.

Having said that, at the moment Trump is favored because he is ahead by small margins in my poll averages in most of the critical swing states, and this lead has increased a bit in the last 6 days.

If you just give every state to the leader in my poll averages, no matter how small the lead, Trump wins by 66 electoral votes. But if you give everything where the margin in my averages is under 5% to one candidate or the other the range of outcomes is from Harris winning by 114 EV to Trump winning by 86 EV.

My probabilistic models estimate Harris's chances of winning as between 5.3% (Independent State Model) and 18.0% (Uniform Swing Model) at the moment, using polling errors from 2008 to 2020 to judge how far off polls are likely to be and in which direction. Since poll errors tend to correlate, I'd put the "real" number closer to the 18% than the 5%.

These numbers essentially assume that my poll averages in the close states will once again underestimate Trump like they did in 2016 and 2020. But all it would take is a small polling error in the opposite direction to give the win to Harris.

At 18% Harris is the underdog, but that is still a high enough number that nobody should be surprised by a Harris win. And with so many states so close, it would not even be a surprise if that win was substantial.

Because of the nature of the Electoral College, "too close to call" does not necessarily mean the final result will be close. It just means we can't tell reliably what is going to happen because too many states could easily go either way.

My TL;DR's are getting longer. Sorry.

OK, so let's get into the meat for people who want more details. Starting with how the spectrum of states with margins under 10% has changed since last time.

On October 24th at 18 UTC, it looked like this:

And as of when I started this post at 21 UTC on October 30th:

So lets look at the changes:

Moved toward Trump:

• Texas (40 EV): Trump by 6.6% -> Trump by 8.4% (Trump+1.8%)
• Georgia (16 EV): Trump by 0.6% -> Trump by 2.3% (Trump+1.7%)
• Arizona (11 EV): Trump by 1.2% -> Trump by 2.7% (Trump+1.5%)
• Florida (30 EV): Trump by 6.6% -> Trump by 7.9% (Trump+1.3%)
• Ohio (17 EV): Trump by 6.1% -> Trump by 7.3% (Trump+1.2%)
• Virginia (13 EV): Harris by 6.3% -> Harris by 5.2% (Trump+1.1%)
• Nevada (6 EV): Trump by 0.1% -> Trump by 1.1% (Trump+1.0%)
• Michigan (15 EV): Harris by 0.3% -> Trump by 0.2% (Trump+0.5%)
• Minnesota (10 EV): Harris by 6.4% -> Harris by 6.3% (Trump+0.1%)
• North Carolina (16 EV): Trump by 1.3% -> Trump by 1.4% (Trump+0.1%)

No movement:

• New Mexico (5 EV): Harris by 7.4%
• Iowa (6 EV): Trump by 4.4%
• Maine-CD2 (1 EV): Trump by 4.4%

Moved toward Harris:

• Pennsylvania (19 EV): Trump by 1.2% -> Trump by 1.1% (Harris+0.1%)
• Alaska (3 EV): Trump by 8.4% -> Trump by 8.2% (Harris+0.2%)
• New Hampshire (4 EV): Harris by 7.4% -> Harris by 8.0% (Harris+0.6%)
• Wisconsin (10 EV): Trump by 0.0% -> Harris by 1.3% (Harris+1.3%)
• Nebraska-CD2 (1 EV): Harris by 7.3% -> Harris by 8.9% (Harris+1.6%)

And with all of this, the tipping point moved from Trump by 0.6% in Georgia to Trump by 1.1% in Pennsylvania.

For the most part, all this movement is probably mostly noise as polls come in and out of the average. To judge trends, lets look at the charts for the seven key states:

Wisconsin has mostly been just barely Harris, probably around a 1% lead lately. You'd probably guess Wisconsin would go Harris even with no polling error.

Michigan is just barely on the Trump side of the line, but seems to mostly have been a narrow Harris lead, again probably about 1%. So again, this is looking like a Harris state even without a polling error.

Pennsylvania looks like a true tossup right now. A month ago I would have put it in the same category as Wisconsin and Michigan, but since the end of September it seems to be hugging the center line, with maybe a slight trend toward Trump. At this point, I really wouldn't want to guess.

My probabilistic analysis gives Trump an 81.6% chance of winning Pennsylvania right now, but again, that assumes that polls are once again underestimating Trump. If you take the polls at face value, I'd call it a true toss up.

I'd put this in the same category as Pennsylvania. If the poll averages don't have a systematic error, this just looks like a complete tossup.

Harris has only rarely actually led in North Carolina. If polls are systematically underestimating Harris, maybe she wins here. Otherwise give this to Trump.

Same with Georgia.

And Arizona.

Where does this put us?

If you trust the poll averages, and assume it isn't systematically underestimating either candidate, we're looking at Harris with 251, Trump with 262, and 25 electoral votes I said were still too close to call.

If you give Harris Nevada's 6 EV, it isn't enough to win.

So yeah, in this scenario it all comes down to what happens in Pennsylvania.

But of course, this is just eyeballing the trends and assuming no systematic error. You get the much wider range of possibilities when considering that really ANY of these states could go either way, allowing for that systematic error, or last minute changes that happen too close to the end for the averages to react:

This envelope of possibilities has evolved like this:

The set of close states just hasn't changed that much this whole time. The lead within those states has moved around, and has indeed trended toward Trump in the last month.

Let's look at that in terms of the tipping point. Once again I'll include lines for 2016 and 2020 for comparison:

Roughly speaking, for a while Harris was leading narrowly, then things were hugging the tie line for a little bit, but in the last couple of weeks it looks like Trump has pulled ahead.

All these are still tiny margins though. The type that can easily be wiped out by a few days of polling.

The thing that has been consistently the case almost the whole time though, that undoubtedly makes the Trump team feel great and the Harris team nervous is the comparison with 2016 and 2020. Harris has consistently underperformed Biden's polling in 2020 and Clinton's polling in 2016. Biden barely won. Clinton lost.

Absent any change in the polls in the next few days, a Harris win would mean that this time the polls underestimated Harris instead of underestimating Trump.

But it doesn't have to be big. Move all the poll averages 1.5% from where they are toward Harris, and you go from Trump winning by 66 EV to Harris winning by 46 EV.

OK, here come the trends in my two probabilistic models:

In the last few weeks, polls have moved a little toward Trump, and of course tick tock, the time to actually change public opinion is running out.

So Harris's chances have been going down and Trump's have been going up.

Things look very different than they did in September when looking at these probabilities. But the right way to look at this is moving from too close to call with Harris favored, to to close to call with Trump favored. Either way, we're still too close to call.

And again, my models at 5% to 18% Harris win odds are more pessimistic for her than other folks, because I am explicitly saying "over the last 4 presidential election cycles polls have tended to underestimate the Republican more often than not, so they probably will this time too". Without this assumption, here are what a few other folks give:

• The Hill: 47% chance of Harris win
• 538: 49% chance of Harris win
• The Economist: 50% chance of Harris win

OK, here is the new map:

6.0 days left until polls start to close on election night.

There have already been new polls since I started this blog post. Always check the main Election 2024 page for the current numbers.

One way or another, we'll know how this plays out soon.

It has been 11 days since my last post. I didn't mean to let it go that long at this stage. Oops.

As usual, lets start with a TL;DR.

The overall situation remains about the same as it has been since the end of September:

It is too close to call, but with Trump having a slight edge. Right now if you just directly give each state to the candidate that is ahead in the Election Graphs poll average, no matter how tiny the margin, then Trump wins by 56 electoral votes.

But there are so many close states that anything from Trump winning by 86 EV to Harris winning by 114 EV is within the realm of the reasonably possible and would not be a surprise.

The tipping point is currently Georgia, where Trump leads by 0.6%.

The EG probabilistic estimates, based on the patterns of EG polling average errors from 2008 to 2020 (where the Republican has been slightly underestimated in the close states more often than not) and accounting for the amount of time left, give Harris's chances of winning as somewhere between 17.5% and 32.5%.

Other places that give probabilities are closer to 50/50 because they assume the direction of polling errors in the past isn't relevant at all to how they may go this time, whereas I use the variances from the past to build my models, essentially assuming that the range of error patterns over the past few elections can tell us something about the range of possible errors we might see this time.

There has also been a lot of talk about low quality polls "polluting" poll averages like those here at Election Graphs. Looking into that, I do a review of the seven swing states including only the highest quality pollsters rather than everything I usually include.

When I do this the tipping point moves from Trump by 0.6% to Harris by 0.1%. A bit better for Harris, but still too close to call.

OK, with the high level conclusions out of the way, lets get into the details.

Normally at this point in the post, I'd jump into looking at how each of the close states has evolved in the polling since my last post. I'll do that in a bit, but I thought I would start a little differently this time.

As of when I started writing this post at 18:00 UTC on October 24th, the categorization view summary looked like this:

And the spectrum of states with margins under 10% looked like this:

The seven key "swing states" all currently have margins under 1.5% in the Election Graphs averages right now. That is tiny. Well within the margins of error of individual polls, and certainly within the ranges that poll averages like mine "bounce around" based on which polls specifically happen to be in the average at any given time.

But there has been a LOT of talk lately about conservative pollsters trying to "flood the averages" with Trump leaning polls. There are a variety of speculations as to the motives for doing something like this.

• Motivate Republicans
• Discourage Democrats
• Set up a narrative for a stolen election if Harris wins
• Just make Trump happy
• They just believe their models, no ulterior motive

If this is happening, Election Graphs is certainly vulnerable to it, because my philosophy is to include everything and just let the averages wash it out over time, just like any other outliers. If there is an intentional effort to manipulate the averages, EG will be impacted by that effort.

I don't care to speculate on the motives of various pollsters, and I certainly don't feel comfortable categorizing pollsters in terms of whether or not they are the kind of pollster who might be trying to intentionally manipulate polling averages.

But 538 keeps a handy set of pollster ratings. These are not based on the affiliations and political leanings of the pollsters, but rather on "the historical track record and methodological transparency of each polling firm's polls". They rate pollsters on a 0 to 3 scale, with 3 being the most trustworthy and reliable pollsters, and go down from there. Some pollsters have no ratings at all either due to a limited track record, or being outright banned from 538 because they are so bad.

In response to a question on Mastodon on October 16th I did a quick look at how Pennsylvania's average would change if instead of including everything in the EG averages, I used 538's pollster ratings as a filter:

@Deixis9 @mastodonmigration Excellent Question.

Using PA as an example and using 528's pollster ratings (scores from 0 to 3), and only including pollsters above various ratings, using the same averaging methodology otherwise:

My Current Avg: Harris by 0.1%
Only 1.5 and Above: Harris by 0.4%
Only 2.0 and Above: Harris by 0.8%
Only 2.5 and Above: Harris by 1.5%

Since my averages are “last 5 polls”, the more restrictive you are, the longer a time period would be included in the average.

https://newsie.social/@ElectionGraphs/113321401468832685

The timeframe of the polls included in the average at that time moved from about one week to about three weeks because of the need to go further back in time to get enough polls at the higher ratings.

At least for Pennsylvania, at that specific time 8 days ago, looking at only the highest quality pollsters instead of letting any old pollster into the average improved Harris's position by 1.4%. Which doesn't sound like a lot, but with 7 states with margins under 1.5%, that 1.4% potentially makes things look a lot different.

If we just shifted every state in the summary above by 1.4% toward Harris, instead of losing by 56 electoral votes, Harris would win by 100 electoral votes. Instead of the tipping point being Trump by 0.6%, the tipping point would be Harris by 0.8%.

But lets not do that, lets do this calculation for all 7 swing states based on the polling that we have today, and see where we end up. For this exercise, we'll look at the averages as I have them today, and then redo each one, otherwise using the exact same logic used in my averages normally, but only using pollsters rated 2.5 or above at 538.

So here we go:

Right now we have Michigan as Harris by 0.3%.

If we only included the high quality pollsters this would be… Trump by 0.5%

So at least for Michigan, moving to the high quality pollsters actually helps Trump by 0.8% at the moment.

Current average: Trump by 0.0% (rounded from Trump by 0.01%).

With only the 2.5 and above pollsters: Harris by 0.6%

So eliminating the low quality pollsters boosts Harris by 0.6%.

Current average: Trump by 0.1%

Only the 2.5s: Harris by 0.8%

So moves things 0.9% toward Harris.

Current: Trump by 0.6%

Only the 2.5s: Trump by 1.1%

So limiting helps Trump by 0.5%

Current: Trump by 1.2%

Only the 2.5s: Harris by 0.1%

So 1.3% better for Harris

Current: Trump by 1.2%

Only the 2.5s: Trump by 2.7%

So helps Trump by 1.5%

Current: Trump by 1.3%

Only the 2.5s: Harris by 0.3%

So helps Harris by 1.6%

OK, that's all seven of them. They vary from helping Harris by 1.6% to helping Trump by 1.5%. Averaging the effects in these 7 states leads to… helping Harris by 0.2%.

So pretty small on average. But how would this change the tipping point or who was winning or losing and all that? Lets put the states in order based on these new averages:

• Nevada (6 EV): Harris by 0.8%
• Wisconsin (10 EV): Harris by 0.6%
• North Carolina (16 EV): Harris by 0.3%
• Pennsylvania (19 EV): Harris by 0.1% <– Tipping Point
• Michigan (15 EV): Trump by 0.5%
• Georgia (16 EV): Trump by 1.1%
• Arizona (11 EV): Trump by 2.7%

With these numbers, the tipping point moves from Trump by 0.6% to Harris by 0.1%, so restricting to the highest quality pollsters improves Harris's tipping point by 0.7%.

This would result in Harris 277 to Trump 261, a 16 electoral vote win for Harris.

So yes, looking at only the highest quality pollsters does result in a bit better picture for Harris. (At least right now, this will obviously change whenever new polls come in, which is multiple times every day at this point.)

But we still end up in a situation where the result is dependent on 7 states with margins under 3%, with 5 of those under 1%, and with a tipping point just barely different than zero.

This is as close to a tie race as you can get.

What would it mean for the EG probabilistic views? Well, you can't really tell directly. The analysis of the 2008 to 2020 elections showing how far off averages were from actual election results included the low quality polls. So to properly answer that question you wouldn't just plug the new averages into the models I already have, you'd have to build new models based on similarly restricting the 2008 to 2020 data to high quality pollsters only.

Plus, at least until we actually have election results, we won't know if the average with or without the lower rated pollsters actually ends up closer to the real results. In 2016 and 2020, my memory is that having these lower rated pollsters in the average actually pushed the averages CLOSER to the actual results in the end, as opposed to making them worse. (I haven't gone back to double check that though.)

Ignoring all of that that, there is one back of the envelope approximation I can make pretty easily. The "Uniform Swing" probability is generally very close to the probability of a win given the margin in the tipping point state. In this case a 0.1% Democratic lead.

This calculation would give Harris a 36.2% chance of winning, compared to the 32.5% chance with the current averages as of when I started this blog post (accounting for the amount of time remaining).

So again a bit of an improvement for Harris, but not enough to flip this from "too close to call but with Trump favored" to "too close too all with Harris favored".

Trump is still favored even when you restrict the poll averages to only the highest quality pollsters. Just by a little less.

So all in all, the "junk pollsters" do make things look a little bit better for Trump than if we used high quality pollsters only, but we don't actually know for sure if that is a better or worse picture of reality, and the overall picture doesn't change. It is still too close to call regardless.

OK, now, with all that out of the way, guess I should do the usual, "how have things changed since last time" thing…

Movement toward Trump:

• Pennsylvania (19 EV): Trump by 0.0% -> Trump by 1.2% (Trump+1.2%)
• Texas (40 EV): Trump by 5.8% -> Trump by 6.6% (Trump+0.8%)
• North Carolina (16 EV): Trump by 1.1% -> Trump by 1.3% (Trump+0.2%)

No movement:

• Nebraska-CD2 (1 EV): Harris by 7.3%
• Virginia (13 EV): Harris by 6.3%
• Iowa (6 EV): Trump by 4.4%
• Florida (30 EV): Trump by 6.6%

Movement toward Harris:

• Maine-CD2 (1 EV): Trump by 4.5% -> Trump by 4.4% (Harris+0.1%)
• New Mexico (5 EV): Harris by 7.2% -> Harris by 7.4% (Harris+0.2%)
• Wisconsin (10 EV): Trump by 0.3% -> Trump by 0.0% (Harris+0.3%)
• Arizona (11 EV): Trump by 1.5% -> Trump by 1.2% (Harris+0.3%)
• New Hampshire (4 EV): Harris by 6.8% -> Harris by 7.4% (Harris+0.6%)
• Maine-All (2 EV): Harris by 9.3% -> Harris by 10.1% (Harris+0.8%)
• Georgia (16 EV): Trump by 1.4% -> Trump by 0.6% (Harris+0.8%)
• Minnesota (10 EV): Harris by 5.4% -> Harris by 6.4% (Harris+1.0%)
• Ohio (17 EV): Trump by 7.1% -> Trump by 6.1% (Harris+1.0%)
• Michigan (15 EV): Trump by 0.8% -> Harris by 0.3% (Harris+1.1%)
• Nevada (6 EV): Trump by 1.2% -> Trump by 0.1% (Harris+1.1%)
• Alaska (3 EV): Trump by 9.8% -> Trump by 8.4% (Harris+1.4%)

So 12 moving toward Harris, with only 3 moving toward Trump. But with all of that, the tipping point still only moved from Trump by 0.8% in Michigan to Trump by 0.6% in Georgia.

So even though a bunch of states moved toward Harris, with Pennsylvania moving toward Trump, the net impact on the tipping point was negligible.

So lets look at the tipping point chart, with the 2016 and 2020 comparison lines:

For the last few weeks, the tipping point has been bouncing around barely on the Trump side of the center line. This is movement from the weeks before that, when it was bouncing around barely on the Harris side of the line instead.

As usual, I will point out that Harris is doing significantly worse than both Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016. In both of those years, the polling underestimated Trump. Absent a large movement in Harris's direction in the next 12 days, if the polls are underestimating Trump again, then he wins. Because he is already leading, and the error would just mean he wins by even more.

To pull out a win, Harris either needs that last minute big move in her direction, or for the polls to be overestimating Trump this time around.

The trends in the two probabilistic models (accounting for time left) look like this:

You'll note that the win odds for both of these models haven't really moved around all that much in October. The Uniform Swing odds have varied a bit more, but both basically show Trump favored, but with non-trivial chances still available for Harris. But no big trend toward either candidate.

This may still change before the end, but time is running out quickly.

We'll end with the current map:

11.7 days until polls start to close on Election Night.

It has been 12 days since my last post. I probably should be doing these weekly at this point, but other things still get in the way. I'm taking time off from the day job for the final two weeks before the election though, so I'll probably do more updates then.

Within reason. Even with updates 12 days apart like this, a lot of the "movement" may just be noise. Just changes within the inherent uncertainty of polling, and with which pollsters happened to be included in the averages at the time of the update. So even when we talk about week to week changes, it will be important to look at the longer term trends, because there is so much polling going on these days, that short term variations may not be "real".

So we'll try to do that, starting with the summary of where we are:

In the last 12 days, the Election Graphs state level polling averages in the critical states have moved toward Trump. Harris is now in the weakest position she has been in since the end of July.

That however still leaves us with a race that is too close for polling to be able to reliably predict a winner. The range of reasonable possibilities goes from a healthy Harris win to a healthy Trump win, and anything in between.

At this very moment, Trump would be favored by a bit (EG currently gives Trump a 70% to 75% chance of winning), but the tipping point is close enough that the next batch of swing state polls could change that dramatically.

Polling is so close to the tie line, that tiny differences in the most recent polls can change who is "ahead". It is just too close for us to be able to tell who is "really" ahead with these kinds of poll averages, and the day to day or week to week changes may not be "real", and it is best to look at longer term trends.

And the longer term trend is that this "right on the line, could go either way" scenario has been where we have been since the end of July.  There has been some back and forth in the numbers week to week, but that overall conclusion has not changed substantially since shortly after Harris took over from Biden.

OK, with that out of the way, let's look at some of those short term changes I just told you to ignore.

On 2024-09-25 the spectrum of states with margins under 10% looked like this:

And as of 01:00 UTC on 2024-10-07 when I started this blog post:

So lets look at the changes:

Movement toward Trump:

• Michigan (10 EV): Harris by 2.8% -> Trump by 0.8% (Trump+3.6%)
• Iowa (6 EV): Trump+1.3% -> Trump+4.4% (Trump+3.1%)
• Pennsylvania (19 EV): Harris by 0.5% -> Harris by 1.1% (Trump+1.6%)
• Virginia (13 EV): Harris by 7.0% -> Harris by 5.5% (Trump+1.5%)
• North Carolina (16 EV): Trump by 0.8% -> Trump by 2.0% (Trump+1.2%)
• New Mexico (5 EV): Harris by 7.9% -> Harris by 7.2% (Trump+0.7%)
• Minnesota (10 EV): Harris by 5.8% -> Harris by 5.3% (Trump+0.5%)
• Texas (40 EV): Trump by 5.9% -> Trump by 6.3% (Trump+0.4%)
• Wisconsin (10 EV): Harris by 1.7% -> Harris by 1.5% (Trump+0.2%)

No Movement:

• Maine-All (2 EV): Harris by 9.3%
• Nevada (6 EV): Harris by 1.5%
• Maine-CD2 (1 EV): Trump by 4.5%

Movement toward Harris:

• Georgia (16 EV): Trump by 1.0% -> Trump by 0.9% (Harris+0.1%)
• New Hampshire (4 EV): Harris by 7.4% -> Harris by 7.8% (Harris+0.4%)
• Florida (30 EV): Trump by 3.7% -> Trump by 2.9% (Harris+0.8%)
• Alaska (3 EV): Trump by 10.8% -> Trump by 9.8% (Harris+1.0%)
• Colorado (10 EV): Harris by 9.8% -> Harris by 10.9% (Harris+1.1%)
• Arizona (11 EV): Trump+1.2% -> Harris by 0.1% (Harris+1.3%)
• Ohio (17 EV): Trump+9.4% -> Trump+7.8% (Harris+1.6%)
• Nebraska-CD2 (1 EV): Harris by 4.3% -> Harris by 7.3% (Harris+3.0%)

Some changes in both directions. Arizona does move from Trump to Harris, but both Michigan and Pennsylvania move from Harris to Trump, and they outweigh Arizona, and the tipping point moves from Harris by 0.5% in Pennsylvania to Trump by 0.9% in Georgia.

Lets take a close up look at the tipping point state, along with three states on each side:

In the last two months the average in Nevada has ranged from Harris by 3.2% to Trump by 0.2%. Right now we have Harris by 1.5%, which is pretty close to the middle of that range. Looking at the longer term trend, Nevada looks like a pretty consistent narrow Harris lead.

The two month range in Arizona is from Harris by 0.6% to Trump by 2.8%, with Harris currently leading by 0.1%. While there have been occasional very narrow Harris leads here, most of the time Trump has led in Arizona. There is always the possibility of polls just systematically underestimating Harris, or a last minute change, but Arizona looks like a Trump state at the moment, despite the current tiny lead by Harris.

Michigan ranges from Harris by 4.5% to Trump by 0.8%, which is where it is right now. Almost the entire time Harris has been leading, but RIGHT NOW Trump is leading. The question is if this is an actual trend, or just that Trump has had a few good polls recently, and there will be a reversion to the mean with the next batch of polls.

Since there haven't really been any news events that you would think would move the polls, it seems reasonable to think Michigan is "really" a very narrow Harris lead. But it is worth paying close attention to the next few polls we see to see if this pops back to the Harris side of the center line.

Harris by 0.6% to Trump by 2.1%. Currently Trump by 0.9% and this is the tipping point state. Georgia has almost always been Trump. It is probably really a narrow Trump win minus systematic polling error or a last minute move.

Harris by 3.0% to Trump by 1.1%, which is where things are now. Very similar to Michigan, almost all the time in the last two months, Harris has held a small lead in Pennsylvania. But at this very moment things have moved toward Trump and he is better off there than he has been since July.

The question is if this is a "real" move, or one that is just driven by a handful of outlier polls, where Trump's lead will disappear as soon as the next batch of polls comes in. We will see soon enough.

If I had to bet though, Pennsylvania is really still a very narrow Harris lead and this is a blip rather than a new trend.

North Carolina has ranged from Harris by 1.4% to Trump by 2.3%, and is currently Trump by 2.0%. Trump seems to be at the upper end of his range here, but Harris has only briefly taken the lead here. If I had to guess, I would say this is really just bouncing around Trump up by 1%.

Of all seven states we are looking at here, Florida is the ONLY one where there appears to be an actual trend, rather than just bouncing around a range as individual polls come in and out of the average, with no "real" movement.

In Florida two months ago Trump was ahead by 7.0%, but now he is only ahead by 2.9%. That's a 4.1% movement toward Harris. Trump is still leading Florida though, and a Harris win would still be an upset.

OK, that is all seven.

So, the point of all that was to try to classify all of these key states by the longer term trends rather than by the poll values at this exact moment.

Doing this, you would give Nevada, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to Harris, but Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida to Trump. (To round out the under 5% places, also Wisconsin to Harris, plus Iowa and Maine-CD2 to Trump.)

This would leave you with Harris 276 to Trump 262, a 14 electoral vote Harris win, which is a bit different than the straight up trust the averages summary currently on the site, which has Trump by 32 electoral votes:

Here is the thing though, ALL of the states reviewed above are close enough that if there is a systematic polling error favoring one side or the other, that they might not actually even be close.

Is my argument that "well, even though right now this state is on one side of the line, it has usually been on the other side and there is no clear trend, so therefore it is probably really on the other side" which I used on Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania plausible? Well yes. It is plausible.

It is also plausible that the straight "trust the current poll averages" number is closer to right than the exercise I just did above. Maybe the recent moves in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania aren't just short term spikes, but represent a real change that will last.

But it would also be plausible to suppose that the poll averages are systematically underestimating Trump in all or most of the close states, much as they did in 2016 and 2020, and therefore Trump may actually be ahead in all seven of these states (and maybe Wisconsin too).

And it would also be plausible to argue that lots of pollsters are overcompensating for their misses in 2016 and 2020 (see this Nate Cohn article for one possible mechanism) and so maybe Harris is really actually leading in most or all of these states.

And of course, there is always the possibility of an "October Surprise" news event that will change things completely in the last few weeks.

You could look at the tipping point the same way we have looked at the close states:

Using the same sort of logic, you'd say the tipping point has ranged from Harris by 2.8% to 1.1% over the last two months, with Trump currently ahead by 0.9%.

You'd say that this is mostly just bouncing around, and the center of attraction is probably just Harris ahead by maybe 1% or so. But you'd wonder about the recent move toward Trump, and watch the next polls in Michigan and Pennsylvania pretty closely to see if this just bounces back toward Harris.

The bottom line is we don't know. There are just too many states near the tipping point that are too close to call. To feel we could feel pretty confident about a winner, I'd want a tipping point over 5%, or at least close to 5%. But we are at a tipping point of 0.9%. So we just don't know.

This is where the probabilistic views I do here at Election Graphs come into place. I use data from 2008 through 2020 to compare final election results in those years to my poll averages X days before the election, and in turn use that to simulate the current election with the same levels of variation that were seen historically.

Originally, I had only done "If the election was today" with these simulations. But because until Election Day, that just isn't true, earlier this year I added a view taking into account the amount of time left.

At a super high level, the more time left, the higher the chances that the person behind in a state would be able to win after all. Also, on average over the last four elections, the final election graphs average underestimated the Republican by about 1.3% in the close states. (That simplifies things, but close enough.) But with more time left, how far off the close states were was different.

With only 30 days left, the "with X days left" view and the "if the election was today" views have gotten much much closer together. Which is of course what you expect. When we get to the very end, they will match exactly, because the election WILL be today.

But at this point they are already pretty close, basically indicating that the time left for things to change dramatically is disappearing quickly, and the probabilities are starting to be dominated by how the polling error will work out, where earlier the probabilities were dominated by the chances of "things changing" in the time left before the election.

So where are we right now?

• With 30 days left:
  • Harris odds between 23.5% and 30.4%
• If the election was today:
  • Harris odds between 20.7% and 25.0%

Here are the charts for the 30 days left view:

So wait, what's the deal here? Didn't I spend most of the first part of the post describing the race as a toss up where there was a decent chance either side could win by a decent margin?

Well yes. Yes I did. And this is NOT inconsistent with that. I also said that currently it would be a tossup with Trump favored. And this is exactly what this shows.

Rounding to big fractions, at the moment we're talking Trump favored over Harris by roughly 75/25. This is still a "toss up". We're not talking about a world where the underdog has a 1% chance, or a 0.1% chance or something else that is essentially miniscule. 25% can happen easily. There are many different scenarios you can imagine that get you to the person with a 25% chance winning.

I often use 2016 as an example here. Election Graphs did not have a probabilistic view in 2016, but the median of sites I could find that did have probabilities gave Trump a 14% chance of winning. And he won. That was a long shot underdog win, and it still happened.

A 25% chance is a much bigger chance than that, and is very possible. I still consider that in the toss up zone, although admittedly on the edge of it.

This is lower than the big guys have Harris at this point. Here is a sampler:

• 538: Harris 55%
• The Hill / DDHQ: Harris 54%
• The Economist: Harris 50%

So why do I have it so much lower? It really comes down to the following:

• The Election Graphs odds are based on how far off the EG polling averages were from 2008 to 2020. On average over these four cycles, in close states the polls underestimated the Republican by 1.3%. So we essentially (again a simplification) don't give the Democrat a 50/50 shot at winning a state unless they are ahead by at least 1.3%. So we are essentially assuming the pols are going to underestimate the Republican, meaning that a small Trump lead has a bigger impact on the odds than you might think otherwise.
• At this exact moment, the last week or two so has been full of polling showing Trump ahead in key states. One week ago, we had Harris odds between 53.4% and 57.5%. The dip in the last week is very specifically due to these recent polls moving the tipping point from Harris ahead by 1.2% to Trump ahead by 0.9%. If the next set of polls pops averages back in Harris's direction, the odds will go back up quite a bit. With things so close, a move of 1% or 2% has a huge impact on the odds.
• My polling averages are intentionally designed to be much more reactive to short term changes as polls get more frequent as the election gets closer. The "big guys" average over longer time periods, and so are less reactive to each individual poll. On the one hand, this makes EG susceptible to false movements due to outliers. On the other, it let us catch the last minute swing toward Trump in 2016 that many others did not.
• If this last week of polls are actually the start of a new trend, then my numbers are just a leading indicator, and the others will follow as more polls come in. If they are just outliers, my numbers will revert to the mean as the next few polls come in.

My argument when I went through the 7 key states was essentially that Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are probably just being pushed around by outliers right now and will revert to the mean, probably bringing the EG probabilistic numbers back closer to 50/50 as more polls come in.

Of course that is just a gut feel. An educated guess looking at the long term trends and also at which pollsters are currently included in the averages. Maybe the next polls will confirm the recent move toward Trump instead.

We will know soon enough.

The first bullet above… the direction of historical polling errors, can also be shown by this chart:

This only shows 2016 and 2020, not the previous elections, but it shows very clearly how much better Trump is doing in the state polling in 2024 than he did in 2020 when he lost, but also how much better he is doing than in 2016 when he won.

Almost the entire time, Trump has been polling better in 2024 than he did not only in 2020, but than he did in 2016, when he won.

Given that context, 25% odds for Harris don't seem that unreasonable. For a Harris win, we either need a big move in the next few weeks, or for the polling error to be in the opposite direction than it has been the last couple cycles.

Now, there are a variety of good reasons to think the polling error might indeed be the opposite direction this time. But we won't really know until after the election.

And this comes to another point. The fact that all the averages and the tipping point are close does not necessarily mean the actual election will be close. It might be. But it also might not be.

Here are charts based on my two models (Independent States and Uniform Swing) showing the range of reasonable possibilities given current polling and the probabilistic model based on historical data:

With Independent States, the 2σ (95.45%) range goes from Harris by 70 to Trump by 100.

With Uniform Swing that 2σ (95.45%) range increases to Harris by 254 to Trump by 156.

That second range is probably a bit too wide. As I've said before the "real" numbers are probably somewhere between the two models. But even the narrower of these two is still a really wide range.

Yes, it might end up close, we could end up waiting a week to find out who won the election. But it is also very reasonably possible that EITHER of the two candidates will end up winning by a healthy margin in the Electoral College and we will know the winner on Election Night. Landslides on either side are even still possible, although less likely.

We just don't have the precision in polling data to have a reliable prediction of who will win.

It may not be close in the end, but it IS too close to call.

Finally, the current map:

29.6 days until polls start to close on Election Night.

Keep watching.

[Edited 2024-10-07 15:21 UTC to correct one place where I flipped Harris and Trump, and spacing in one other place.]