WaPo Principal Data Scientist Lenny Bronner explains how “Harris has opened up a second path to victory, according to The Post’s polling model.”
Since President Joe Biden exited the presidential race on July 21 and passed the baton to Kamala Harris, his vice president, the race has effectively reversed itself. It is no exaggeration to state that Harris would be the favorite to win the White House, according to our polling model, if the presidential contest were held today.
Relative to the day that Biden dropped out, Harris has gained two percentage points nationally and, as of Sunday, leads in our national polling average. In swing states, she has gained an average of 2.1 points since June 21 and leads in 2 of 7 of them.
Harris has taken the lead in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and has substantially closed the gap in Michigan, where Donald Trump now leads by less than one percentage point (if this trend continues, we’d expect our average to show a tie in that state in the coming days).
According to our polling model, Harris still trails Trump in the electoral college tally if the election were held today and every state votes as their polling average currently demonstrates. Nonetheless, she would be the favorite if voters today went to the polls because Harris now has more paths to the presidency than Donald Trump — that is, she is competitive in more states that could add up to 270 votes or an electoral college victory.
Our modeling shows that Harris has two paths to possible success: the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the Sun Belt states of Georgia, Arizona and Nevada as well as North Carolina (she could win in either region and still claim the White House). Meanwhile, Trump must win both the Rust Belt and Sun Belt to triumph.
There’s a whole lot more but that’s the gist.
Democratic consultant Doug Sosnik piles on in a NYT op-ed titled “How Harris Has Completely Upended the Presidential Race, in 14 Maps.”
With Kamala Harris now at the top of the ticket, the enthusiasm and confidence within the Democratic Party feel stronger than at any point I’ve seen since Barack Obama ran for president in 2008. And it’s not just vibes: The paths to victory in the Electoral College have been completely reshaped for the Democrats – and for Donald Trump – since my last analysis of the electoral map on July 12, nine days before Joe Biden exited the race.
Not only have Democrats come home to support their party’s nominee, they are now also more energized about the election than Republicans. Ms. Harris has quickly picked up support from nonwhite and younger voters.
We are now back to the same electoral map that we had before Mr. Biden’s summertime polling collapse: Once again, the winner in November will come down to the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Current polling shows the transformed race: While Mr. Biden trailed Mr. Trump in all seven battleground states last month, Ms. Harris is now leading Mr. Trump by four points in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the latest New York Times/Siena College polls. Other polls show Ms. Harris in a statistical dead heat in Georgia and Arizona.
Those polls also reveal one of Mr. Trump’s biggest obstacles to winning the election: A majority of the country has never supported him, either as president or as a candidate for office. In the Times/Siena surveys, Mr. Trump had polled at only 46 percent in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And with the race no longer between two unpopular nominees, support for third-party candidates has dropped, making it much more difficult for Mr. Trump to win.
And yet: Republicans have a structural advantage in the Electoral College system of voting, giving Mr. Trump at least one advantage against a surging Ms. Harris.
The G.O.P. lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections, yet won the White House in three of those elections. In 2016, Mr. Trump eked out Electoral College wins in swing states like Wisconsin even as Hillary Clinton crushed him in the most populous states like California. The Republican edge has only grown stronger with the reallocation of electoral votes based on the most recent census.
Given that structural advantage, Georgia, and its 16 Electoral College votes, is increasingly becoming a pivotal state that Mr. Trump can’t lose. If Ms. Harris is able to carry Georgia – and Mr. Trump seems to be trying to help her by inexplicably attacking the popular incumbent Republican governor and his wife – then she would have 242 electoral votes, only 28 short of the 270 needed to win.
The titles mentioned in the headline are interactive an instructive. But the excerpt again has the gist: bu dumping Biden, Democrats flipped the script from an election they felt they couldn’t win to one where it’s their race to lose.
The fact that Georgia is again at play is huge. While it’s mathematically possible, it’s simply hard to fathom a race where Harris wins Georgia but loses Pennsylvania.
