State of the 2024 Race as of Oct. 28
State of the 2024 Race as of Oct. 28
Slight shifts in polling favor Harris, but neither candidate has a clear lead in the Electoral College
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.
My introduction to this email will be a bit quick this week, as I am on my way to Pennsylvania to canvass for Kamala Harris. There are eight days left before Election Day, if you haven’t volunteered to help Harris win, now is the time to do so!
Last week, the previous two weeks of tightening polls set off a wave of unrest amongst voters who are, quite reasonably, scared about a potential Trump victory. This caused a very real vibes shift, but it arrived at an ironic time because the polls generally stopped tightening this week — and, in fact, Harris gained a bit of ground in my weighted averages.
The election is still a toss-up. Forecast models have it basically 50/50. The polls are effectively tied. I can go into why I think Harris is well-placed to win a coin flip race — and I will, next week.
Right now, what matters is doing the volunteer work needed to get out the vote and bring victory home. Please, if you care about the future of our nation, of our democracy, or of our world, use this last week before Election Day to do your part by volunteering with the Harris campaign.
Road to 270 Electoral Votes
Neither candidate holds measurable leads in enough states to win if the election were held today based on my polling averages. Harris has leads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada that round to zero — so if she holds those she’d win with 276 electoral votes, but can you really call a lead of less than half a point a lead? The methodology used to calculate these averages is described towards the end of this post.
🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 1 point in Michigan (15 electoral votes). This is a shift of 1 point to Harris in the last week.
🟣 Neither candidate appears to lead in Nevada (6 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes).
🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 1 point in Georgia (16 electoral votes) and North Carolina (16 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point away from Trump in Georgia in the last week.
🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 2 points in Arizona (11 electoral votes).
In the national popular vote, Harris appears to lead by around 2 points.
The present tipping point state is Wisconsin, and the current differential between the tipping point margin and the national popular vote is 1.6 points, a decrease of 0.1 points since last week..
A uniform standard polling error towards either candidate would lead to them sweeping all seven swing states.
Polling in the Past Week
There was a lot of polling last week, and at the national level it was better for Harris than the surveys completed the week before. Further, the higher quality pollsters reported better numbers for Harris than polling firms of more marginal regard.
Amongst the highest-quality pollsters, an Ipsos poll for ABC reported a 4 point Harris lead. Monmouth, an Ipsos poll for Reuters, and two YouGov polls (one for The Economist and one for The Times of London) all gave Harris a 3 point lead. While another YouGov, this time for CBS, showed a 1 point edge for Harris and a New York Times / Siena poll was tied.
Other pollsters were a bit all over the map: Morning Consult reported a 4 point Harris lead. An SSRS poll for CNN and a survey conducted by Tufts University gave Harris a 1 point edge. Harris X, Redfield & Wilton, and Fabrizio / GBAO showed Trump ahead by 1, 2, and 3 points, respectively. And then there was Big Village: their survey of likely voters gave Harris a whopping 7 point lead. They get the “we don’t herd our results to the media narrative” prize of the week, I think.
Finally, the TIPP tracking poll continues to bounce around, showing Harris up 3 in a three day sample ending on October 23, and then the race tied in a sample ending on October 26.
🔵 Harris held a lead of 1.8 points in a weighted average of all national polls completed in the week of October 20, compared to a 1.2 point advantaged in surveys completed the week before, and a 2.7 point lead in polls completed the week of October 6.
State polling was a bit more mixed last week, with Harris seeing a major gain in Michigan, and important shift towards her in Pennsylvania, and a bit of improvement in Arizona, while Wisconsin got tighter, and Nevada continued to bounce back and forth between her and Trump. But in the three states she needs to get to 270 (and by that I mean exactly 270) electoral votes, Harris was in the lead.
In Michigan, three new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 2.8 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.6 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.
In Pennsylvania, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.6 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.1 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.
In Wisconsin, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.2 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.9 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.
In Nevada, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.2 points in the weighted average, compared to a 0.9 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.
In North Carolina, six new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.1 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.
In Georgia, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.1 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.
In Arizona, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.5 point Trump lead 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. The row at the bottom is the previous week’s average in each state, to provide a sense of how the averages of these aggregators have changed.
The divergence seen amongst aggregators last week has continued. Of the six aggregators, two (Split Ticket and me) have Harris leading in states worth 276 electoral votes, while VoteHub would show her winning with exactly 270. Nate Silver’s averages would point to a 281 electoral vote win by Trump, with FiveThirtyEight showing Trump presently ahead in 287 electoral votes worth of states. The Economist continues to be the most Trump-friendly, showing him leading with 297 electoral votes.
In the average of the averages, Harris leads in 257 electoral votes, Trump is ahead in 262 electoral votes, and, unsurprisingly, it all would come down to Pennsylvania.
Also, it’s worth noting that in the average of averages, Harris’s position improved over the last week in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, and didn’t move in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump gained ground in Nevada and North Carolina.
None of these leads are large enough to survive even a standard polling error.
Which, again, is to say that this thing is as close as can be. So get out there and volunteer this week for Kamala Harris!
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.