With just days to go until voters head to polling stations across the United States recent surveys suggest the presidential contest between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump remains tight.
According to the University of Florida's election lab as of November 1, 66,100,521 early votes had already been cast across the U.S., consisting of 35,079,332 in-person early votes and 30,903,354 returned mail-in ballots. Of those who have voted 38.4 percent were recorded as registered Democrats, 36.1 percent as Republicans and 25.4 percent had no major party affiliation.
It will take 270 electoral votes to win the 2024 presidential election. Joe Biden triumphed in 2020 with 306 votes by winning the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from Donald Trump.
The election this time around centers on seven critical battleground states - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
A number of organizations have created models to predict the result based on some combination of recent polling, demographic information and other data. Looking at the individual state polling of these models, Newsweek has broken down three possible scenarios that are being predicted by major forecasters at the moment. It should be noted that almost all battleground state polls are within the margin of error, meaning that more than possible that Kamala Harris or Donald Trump ends up winning every single one of these states.
Newsweek contacted the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris presidential election campaigns for comment via email.
Harris 270 (VoteHub)
VoteHub projects a Harris victory as of November 1, with 270 Electoral College votes for the Democratic candidate against 268 for Trump.
In this scenario, Harris manages to hold on to the three Blue Wall states Biden won in 2020, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, plus get the highly likely single electoral college vote from Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, to obtain exactly 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election.
VoteHub's data indicated Harris is ahead in the critical swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, though Trump had the lead in North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. In terms of vote share Harris led by 48.8 percent of the vote against 47.1 percent for the Republican nominee.
A model from VoteHub has Harris on course for a razor tight victory with 270 Electoral College votes. Race to the White House
VoteHub only included pollsters rated A+ to B- by website Race to the White House in its analysis. They said: "In our recent polls average, each pollster is given equal weight. When there are multiple polls from the same pollster, the findings are averaged. This 'flat average' is based solely on polls from the last 28 days for national and state polls."
Trump 287 (RealClearPolling)
RealClearPolling's analysis as of November 1, last updated on October 30, showed Trump on track for victory with 287 Electoral College votes compared with 251 for Harris.
In this scenario, Harris holds on to Michigan and Wisconsin, but Trump flips Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania to win the election.
Notably, RealClearPolling's model suggests Harris has recovered substantially in the past couple of weeks, with the data showing Trump winning with 312 Electoral College votes against 226 on October 17.
The data used by RealClearPolling includes surveys conducted by Rasmussen Reports, which was described as "right-wing" by The Washington Post. In March 2024 another major polling analytics website, 538, announced it would no longer use data from Rasmussen Reports in its models.
Trump 297 (Decision Desk HQ)
Analysis published by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill, last updated on October 28, put Trump on 297 Electoral College votes versus 241 for Harris after all the votes were allocated. This figure was calculated by adding up the Electoral College votes from each state based on Decision Desk HQ projections.
In this scenario, Harris only holds on to Michigan as Trump flips Wisconsin as well as Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania to win the election.
Overall, Decision Desk HQ gave Trump a 54 percent chance of victory on November 5, against 46 percent for Harris.
The model classed Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan as "toss-up" states, though Trump enjoyed a slight advantage in all but the last of these.
Once toss-up states were removed from the model Decision Desk HQ had Trump on 235 Electoral College votes against 226 for Harris.
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