Julia Nikhinson/AP/AAP
by Adrian Beaumont, The University of Melbourne
The United States presidential election will be held on November 5. In analyst Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls, Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump by 48.7–46.2. In my previous US politics article on August 30, Harris led Trump by 48.8–45.0.
Joe Biden’s final position before his withdrawal as Democratic candidate on July 21 was a national poll deficit against Trump of 45.2–41.2. By the election, Biden will be almost 82, Trump is now 78 and Harris will be 60.
The next event that could potentially change the race is Tuesday’s debate between Harris and Trump. The June 27 debate between Biden and Trump eventually led to Biden’s withdrawal. With her current weakening poll numbers, it’s Harris that will need to perform best.
The US president isn’t elected by the national popular vote, but by the Electoral College, in which each state receives electoral votes equal to its federal House seats (population based) and senators (always two). Almost all states award their electoral votes as winner takes all, and it takes 270 electoral votes to win (out of 538 total).
The most important swing state is Pennsylvania, with 19 electoral votes. Silver’s aggregate gives Harris just a 0.3% lead in that state. Harris leads in Georgia (16 electoral votes) by 0.1% and in Michigan (15 electoral votes) by 1.2%. The Electoral College is biased to Trump, with Harris needing to win the national popular vote by at least two points to be the Electoral College favorite.
Harris’ Electoral College win probability has dropped in Silver’s model in every day’s update since August 27, and Trump now has a 64% chance to win, his highest since Silver started his Harris vs Trump model in late July. Harris’ win probability peaked at 57% on August 14.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast model still has Harris narrowly ahead with a 53% win probability. The difference is mostly because Silver’s model is applying a convention bounce adjustment to Harris’ current polls owing to the late August Democratic convention. With Harris’ numbers slipping, this convention bounce adjustment is justified.
A national poll by the highly regarded Siena for The New York Times that was conducted recently (September 3–6) gave Trump a 48–47 lead. In this poll, 47% said Harris was too left-wing, while only 32% thought that Trump was too right-wing.
Silver said that left-wing positions Harris took in 2019 during her failed 2020 presidential campaign may be biting her now. He particularly cites Harris’ agreement with the proposition that her “health care plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants” in one of the 2019 Democratic debates as an example of Harris being too left-wing.
Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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