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.