CNN
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The 2024 presidential election continues to be the closest of the century. The truth is, it’s the closest race for the White Home up to now 60 years.
Polling because the September 10 debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris reveals that whereas the vp appears to have opened up a slight national edge over her Republican rival, their race stays effectively inside the margin of error and too near name. That is particularly the case when wanting on the Electoral Faculty.
Take into account the polling that got here out Sunday from CBS News and NBC News. Their surveys had been a few of Harris’ finest so far, and but she is just forward by 4 and 5 factors, respectively. The Democratic nominee’s largest leads within the CBS Information/YouGov and NBC Information polls in 2016 and 2020 had been a minimum of double the place Harris is now.
To place the brand new Sunday polls into additional context, contemplate all of the nationwide surveys performed because the debate. This consists of the aforementioned polls and surveys from ABC News/Ipsos, Fox News and The New York Times/Siena College. On common, based on the most recent CNN Ballot of Polls, Harris is forward by 3 factors.
This matches what we’ve seen all yr: Neither candidate has been in a position to open a bonus of 5 factors or extra within the nationwide polling. This consists of the interval when President Joe Biden was the doubtless after which the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The truth that nobody has led by a minimum of 5 factors this cycle is noteworthy as a result of it’s extremely uncommon. Even in races that find yourself being very shut, one candidate in some unspecified time in the future nearly all the time builds a big benefit. This yr, most voters appear locked in.
Even Harris’ dominating debate efficiency over Trump – according to the voters – has solely appeared to maneuver the dial by a number of factors.
You’d have to return to the 1960 marketing campaign to discover a race by which the major-party nominees had been all the time inside 5 factors of one another in a mean of the nationwide polling. Each presidential yr since then has had a minimum of three weeks when one candidate was up by 5 factors or extra.
A 3-point edge within the nationwide polls is way from safe for Harris. Since 1948, the typical distinction between the polls on the eve of the election and the Election Day consequence has been 3 factors. Some years, like 2020, the error fee is even larger.
(This far out from the election, the average difference between the polls and the eventual consequence could be, not surprisingly, larger.)
However maybe the extra essential cause this election is simply too near name is that this isn’t a nationwide election. As a substitute, it’s a race to 270 electoral votes by means of the Electoral Faculty.
Trump is more likely to be in a greater place within the Electoral Faculty than the favored vote due to his coalition (i.e., White voters and not using a school diploma are overrepresented in key battleground states). One estimate from my old colleague Nate Silver means that Harris would want to win the favored vote by larger than 3 factors to be thought-about a transparent favourite within the Electoral Faculty.
She isn’t there but.
Certainly, neither Harris nor Trump has a giant leg up once you take a look at the state-level information. Per CNN’s current race ratings, Harris begins at 225 electoral votes to Trump’s 219. Seven states and the one electoral vote in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District stay up for grabs.
Harris appears to be doing barely higher than Trump in three of the seven states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This northern battleground path is much like the one which Biden’s marketing campaign had hoped to attain again within the spring.
However once I say Harris does “barely higher” than Trump, the emphasis is on the phrase barely. Harris is polling about 2 factors above Trump in all of them.
We’re speaking about races effectively inside the margin of error and with no clear chief.
In the meantime, Trump does barely higher than Harris in two of those states: Arizona and Georgia. However like with Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for Harris, Trump is doing a degree or two higher, on common, than Harris within the polling from these two states.
When you assigned the electoral votes to the candidate with a larger than 1-point benefit at this level within the polls, Harris could be at 269 to Trump’s 246.
Nevada and North Carolina are inside a degree and method too near name, similar to the opposite 5 states. However for the sake of this train, we’ll give Trump North Carolina, a state he’s gained twice earlier than and the place the polling common has the previous president polling above Harris by mere decimal factors. Beneath this situation, he would get to 262 electoral votes.
The restricted information now we have about Nebraska’s 2nd District signifies that Harris is favored there. (The Cornhusker State is one among two states, together with Maine, that splits a few of its electoral votes by congressional district.) Biden would have won the current incarnation of the 2nd District by 6 factors in 2020 – a considerably wider margin than what we’ve seen within the seven battleground states this yr. Most modeling, in addition to the betting markets, has Harris forward on this Omaha-area seat.
A win in Nebraska’s 2nd District would doubtless give Harris precisely 270 electoral votes when added to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Speak about barely getting by!
There’s a catch right here, nonetheless. Some Nebraska Republicans, urged on by Trump, want to change the state’s method of allocating electoral votes to a winner-take-all format.
No Democrat has gained Nebraska on the presidential degree since 1964.
If such a last-minute rule change had been to occur, that might deliver Trump as much as 263 electoral votes to Harris’ 269, and the election would then come all the way down to Nevada and its 6 electoral votes. The final revealed ballot that meets CNN’s requirements for publication was our own poll conducted by SSRS final month that discovered Harris at 48% and Trump at 47%, effectively inside the margin of error.
In different phrases, a Trump win in Nevada is sort of believable and would depart us taking a look at a 269-269 tie.
That might throw the presidential race to the US Home, the place every state delegation will get one vote. Trump would likely be favored beneath that situation as a result of Republicans usually tend to proceed holding extra state delegations within the chamber than Democrats come January.
No matter who wins Nevada, we could possibly be ready some time on the Silver State to depend its ballots. And given how lengthy that has taken in past close races, we could possibly be ready days, with the presidency within the steadiness.
The underside line is that this yr’s presidential race is as shut because it could possibly be. One tiny shift in both route may make all of the distinction on the planet.