State of the 2024 Race as of Oct. 7
Harris’s top line lead holds, but she's seen some slippage in the swing state standings
Thank you for reading my analysis of current polling in the 2024 Presidential race. This will be updated every Monday evening until the election. If you have friends who you think would be interested in receiving these updates, please share this with them! There is no cost to subscribe to these updates.
The steady-state nature of the 2024 presidential campaign remains mostly unaltered in this week’s update. Once again, Harris has leads in states totaling 276 electoral votes compared to Trump’s 262 electoral votes. Yet again, Harris leads by around 3 points in the national popular vote. In the margins, however, there’s been some movement: Harris slipped by 1 point in Nevada and Wisconsin, and now those states are around as close as Pennsylvania. Within those rounded margins, every swing state has drifted a bit away from Harris in the last week, and Pennsylvania has now replaced North Carolina as the closest state in my polling averages.
For Democrats, this is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to work hard. If you have the ability to get yourself to Pennsylvania to canvass, do so. If you have some money to spare, donate it to Harris’s campaign or to a competitive House race in Pennsylvania, where every Democrat who we can pull to the polls is another vote to save American democracy.
These slight shifts — and they are very slight — could just be statistical noise. However, they do seem to fit a pattern of Harris doing better when she’s in the spotlight and very visibly campaigning and slipping a bit when she’s not. Harris is great on the stump, does well in media interviews, and has a lot of charisma. Her campaign should do more to get her out in front of the public. More press, more events, and, sure, do that informercial in the swing states. Whatever it takes. Leave it all on the field.
Road to 270 Electoral Votes
Kamala Harris holds leads in slightly more than enough states to win if the election were held today based on my polling averages. The methodology used to calculate these averages is described towards the end of this post.
🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 2 points in Michigan (15 electoral votes).
🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 1 point in Nevada (6 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point away from Harris in Nevada and Wisconsin in the last week.
🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 1 point in Arizona (11 electoral votes), Georgia (16 electoral votes), and North Carolina (16 electoral votes).
In the national popular vote, Harris appears to lead by around 3 points.
The present tipping point state is Pennsylvania, and the current differential between the tipping point margin and the national popular vote is 2.2 points, a decrease of 0.3 point since last week.
Polling in the Past Week
After a great week in national polling two weeks ago, the numbers for Harris were slightly tighter last week.
High quality polls from Susquehanna and Leger (for the New York Post) gave Harris decent leads of 5 and 4 points, respectively. Morning Consult also reported a 5 point lead for Harris.
A YouGov poll for The Economist gave Harris a 3 point lead, while another of their polls, this time for Yahoo! News, came out a tie, as did a poll by RMG Research.
Data for Progress and TIPP Insights both showed Harris leading by 3 points. A Marist College survey gave Harris a 2 point lead, as did a poll by Redfield & Wilton. And Emerson came in with a 1 point lead for Harris.
The chart below shows each week of national polling since Harris entered the race, weighted by pollster quality.
🔵 Harris held a lead of 2.6 points in a weighted average of all national polls completed in the week of September 29, compared to 3.7 points the week before, and 3.6 points during the week of September 15.
There wasn’t nearly as much state-level polling released last week as the week before. Perhaps pollsters were holding off to poll after the Vice Presidential debate? In any case, the main theme in the state by state polling released last week was very slight movement — except in the case of Nevada, which shifted pretty sharply from a Harris lead in the polls released two weeks ago to a tie last week.
In Wisconsin, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 1.9 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 1 point in surveys released the week before.
In Michigan, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 1.1 points in the weighted average of them, the same margin as in surveys released the week before.
In Pennsylvania, five new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.7 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.4 points in surveys released the week before.
In Nevada, four new polls were released last week, and the results were 🟣 tied between Harris and Trump in the weighted average, compared to a 2.7 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.
In Georgia, two new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.6 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.4 points in surveys released the week before.
In North Carolina, seven new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.6 points in surveys released the week before.
In Arizona, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 2.1 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.5 points in surveys released the week before.
Comparison to Other Aggregators
Below is a table that compares my current projected margin in each of the seven swing states with that of other polling aggregators. Some of these websites also publish forecasts of the eventual November 5 results, but what I am listing here are their estimated margins of where the polls stand in each state today
As you can see, all the aggregators now agree on which candidate is ahead in each state. All aggregators also show movement to Trump across every state and the national popular vote since last week. Enough to make Pennsylvania the closest state, but not enough to put Trump ahead in the Electoral College in any aggregator’s polling average.
Methodology
The polling numbers discussed above are weighted, adjusted, and blended averages based on pretty much every poll released since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee in late July.
To produce these averages I take the following steps:
I collect polls from Twitter, aggregators and news websites. In cases when pollsters release more than one survey at the same time, I preference the head to head Harris versus Trump polls over the broader field polls (because I believe that polling greatly overstates third party vote shares) and likely voter surveys over registered voter surveys. I do not include “all adult” polls.
I weight the polls by pollster quality and time since completion. For pollster quality, I used the grades from FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin translated into a 0.0 to 1.0 value. Pollsters with no such ranking are still included, but with a fairly low weight. Likely voter surveys are given 10% more weight than a registered voter survey from the same pollster would be. The weight given to a poll falls every seven days after its completion, to preference newer data over older data, and is zeroed out six weeks after the poll came out of the field. I do not adjust the weight given to a survey based on sample size.
I then adjust those weighted averages to split the undecideds and set the projected third party share of the vote at around 2 percent. This completes the process for creating my estimated national popular vote, but to create a final estimated vote in each state, there’s one more step.
I then take the margin in my estimated national popular vote, and combine it with a weighted average of the differential between each swing state/district’s 2016 and 2020 results and the national 2016 and 2020 results. This gives me an estimate of what the margin in each swing state/district would be based just on historical patterns and my estimated national popular vote margin. I then combine these regressions with the weighted, adjusted average for each state/district at a 20% to 80% weight, giving me a blended number and a final estimated vote in each swing state/district. In cases where there a very few, or only very old, polls in a specific state or district, I increase the weight of regression based on national polling.
While others might quibble with one part or another of this methodology, I’m comfortable with it. It’s my best attempt to take the data available and use it to create a fair estimate of the present state of the presidential campaign without my partisan preferences influencing my analysis.
If you have a significant problem with any of the steps above, please just accept that I’m not going to change my process at this point. If you want to do your own analysis, you almost certainly have Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers (which is what I use) on your computer. Take a crack at it — math is fun!
Kamala Harris for President
While the point of these averages is to try to create an estimate of where the presidential race now stands in a data-based and impartial manner, I am not impartial. I don’t think any of us should be.
Kamala Harris is the right choice for President of the United States. She has been an excellent Vice President. She has cast tie breaking votes on landmark legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. She is running on a platform built around addressing real challenges facing the American people. She has plans to address prices and the cost of living. She has plans to address our nation’s critical housing shortage. She has plans to make it easier for new parents to afford the raise a family, for seniors to afford the prescription drugs we need, for young people to afford college. She supports fully restoring a woman’s right to choose across our nation, and will stand up against the radical right-wing agenda embodied by Project 2025, which is a direct threat to the freedoms and civil liberties Americans hold dear. She will stand up for our allies and democracy at home and abroad. She will not abandon Ukraine or NATO. She will work to build an economy of opportunity, one where we tackle climate change by embracing new technologies and creating energy abundance, one where it’s easier to start a business, one where everyone has a fair shot to achieve their dreams.
Donald Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square, and responded to that fact by whipping a mob into a frenzy and sitting back and doing nothing while they stormed the United States Capitol. You probably watched this attack on our nation on your television. I got to experience it firsthand as I hid in a secure room with my boss while the heart of American democracy was defiled. This was the climactic moment of a terrible presidency that divided our nation, that diminished our standing in the world, that packed our courts with theocrats who have used their power to undermine the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Four years ago, 81 million Americans voted to fire Trump. Today, he’s surrounding himself with anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts, anti-gay activists who coddle dictators like Assad and Putin, and fanatics who proudly spread divisive and dangerous lies.
Kamala Harris has spent her life working for a better America as a prosecutor, a Senator, and Vice President. She’s an inspiring American story.
Donald Trump has spent his entire life nursing grievances and caring only about himself. He embodies everything our parents told us not to be when we grow up.
Vote for Kamala Harris on or before November 5, and if you can, please contribute to her campaign.
Local Politics Matter, Too!
And while I have your attention, I feel compelled to mention that I’m running for re-election on the Democratic ticket for Alexandria City Council this November. Over the three years that I have been a member of the City Council, I have worked to address our city’s affordable housing crisis, to do our part in the fight against climate change, to improve public safety by supporting our first responders, to support our young people by increasing funding for our schools and our senior citizens on fixed incomes by reducing their property taxes. I’ve also led the Council in standing up for Alexandria’s values by defending our abortion clinics in the wake of Dobbs and supporting our schools as they stood up to Governor Youngkin’s attacks on trans students.
I’m proud of my record in Alexandria, and of our city’s role in keeping Virginia blue. If you’d like to contribute to help me, and my fellow Democratic nominees, win in November and turn out the vote for Kamala Harris and Time Kaine, you can do so here.