Posted on 11/05/2024 4:24:15 PM PST by Morgana
As American voters head into Election Day 2024, a chorus of polling experts agreed that the presidential race between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is neck-and-neck with no clear favorite.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, statistician Nate Silver unveiled his Silver Bulletin’s final forecast model, showing each major party candidate essentially has a 50% shot of becoming the nation’s 47th president.
“We ran 80,000 simulations tonight,” Silver wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Harris won in 40,012.”
Harrris “did not win in 39,988 simulations (49.985%),” Silver and co-author Eli McKown-Dawson explained in their final Silver Bulletin post. “Of those, 39,718 were outright wins for Donald Trump and the remainder (270 simulations) were exact 269-269 Electoral College ties: these ties are likely to eventually result in Trump wins in the U.S. House of Representatives.”
According to Silver’s polling averages, all of the battleground states except for Arizona (where Trump has a 2.4-point lead) are within one point.
Trump is leading in five of the seven swing states – all except for Michigan and Wisconsin – enough to give him a 287-251 Electoral College victory, per Silver’s averages. However, his lead in Pennsylvania is only 0.1%, and if this state is instead placed in Harris’ column, she wins the election.
The averages showed that in the past week, Harris had slightly gained in every swing state with the exception of North Carolina, which did not move in either direction. However, in the past month, Trump has conversely gained in every state except for Georgia (where Harris gained by 0.1%).
Per Silver’s averages, Harris is leading the national popular vote by one point with 48.6% to Trump’s 47.6%.
As of late Monday night, FiveThirtyEight, the polling website Silver founded and departed from last year, also forecasted a virtual 50-50 split between the candidates.
When FiveThirtyEight’s simulations were run 1,000 times, Harris won 504 times, compared to 494 times for Trump, and twice when there was no electoral college winner – a breakdown eerily similar to the one Silver produced.
Also per FiveThirtyEight’s forecast, Trump had a 67% chance of winning Arizona and a 59% chance of winning Georgia and North Carolina. In Nevada, both candidates had a 50-50 chance of winning.
Harris meanwhile had a 51% chance of winning Pennsylvania, a 58% chance in Wisconsin, and 60% in Michigan.
CNN Senior Writer and Political Analyst Harry Enten on Monday morning showed that his final polling aggregates had Trump with leads in all four of the Sun Belt battleground states, while Harris was leading in the three Great Lakes battlegrounds by less than a point each.
Enten showed Trump leading in Nevada and North Carolina by less than a point, in Georgia by one point, and in Arizona by three points. Arizona was the only battleground state where Enten found a candidate leading by more than one point.
Furthermore, Enten pointed out that if the candidates were to win the respective swing states in which they are leading, Harris would finish with exactly 270 electoral votes, the minimum amount to win the presidency.
“That is as tight as it can possibly be,” Enten declared on a CNN broadcast. “That is the tightest the polls have ever been projected onto the electoral map, even tighter than 2000 when Al Gore was projected to get 281 electoral votes, since 1972.”
Gore lost that year’s election to George W. Bush by a tally of 271 to 266 electoral votes due to coming up short in Florida by a razor-thin margin. However, Gore won a plurality of the popular vote.
Enten explained that even though the polls show a tight race, there is still a strong possibility that Trump or Harris could win the race by a comfortable electoral vote margin.
“Will the 2024 winner get 300+ electoral votes?” Enten asked. He answered that according to an aggregate of forecast models, there is a six-in-ten chance that either candidate could enjoy “a relative blowout in today’s day and age.”
“Essentially, if you look back at swing state polling averages since 1972, the average error in the swing states is 3.4 points,” he noted. “And of course all of the seven closest battleground states are within three points.”
“So, if you get an average error and it all goes in one direction,” he indicated, “lo and behold, you will in fact get a blowout in the electoral college of the winner getting at least 300 electoral votes.”
“The only takeaway at this point,” Enten summarized, “it’s historically tight but basically any scenario is on the table.”
Enten agreed with CNN host John Berman’s point that “Trump can do better than he did in 2016, but tilts the other way,” while “Harris can do better than Joe Biden did.”
However, other prognosticators indicated a race in which Trump had a clear, yet still slight advantage over Harris.
In its final pre-election forecast published Monday evening, Decision Desk HQ projected that Trump had a 53% chance of winning, compared to Harris’ 47%.
This forecast model also projected that Trump would win 275 electoral votes – five over the threshold required to win the White House – compared to Harris’ 263.
In another development that might bode well for Trump, AtlasIntel – widely considered to be the most accurate pollster of the last presidential cycle – released its final batch of polls, showing Trump with a lead in every battleground state.
In the firm’s head-to-head polls between Trump and Harris, the former president led by 5.1 points in Arizona, 3.1 points in Nevada, 2.1 in North Carolina, 1.6 in Georgia, 1.5 in Michigan, one point in Pennsylvania, and 0.9 in Wisconsin.
Leading prediction website Polymarket also gave Trump the edge as of 2:00 a.m. EST – where it showed the 45th president’s chance of winning at 61% compared to the sitting vice president’s 39%.
That number is up from October 15, when Polymarket gave Trump a 58% chance of winning reelection to a second non-consecutive term, but down from October 22, when it listed Trump’s chances of victory at 66%.
In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Polymarket showed that Trump had a 78% chance of winning Arizona, 67% chance of winning Georgia, 66% chance of winning North Carolina, 59% chance of winning Pennsylvania, and 59% chance of winning Nevada.
Meanwhile, the website had Harris as the favorite in Michigan (61%) and Wisconsin (55%).
Cook Political Report Senior Editor and Elections Analyst Dave Wasserman noted that the outcome of the presidential election will ultimately come down to which groups of voters turn out to vote.
Wasserman wrote on X Monday afternoon that, per an NBC News poll, while 80% of women rated their interest in the 2024 election as at least a 9 out of 10, only 74% of men said the same.
“If Harris wins tomorrow, this will be a big reason why,” he noted.
“On the other hand, Black voters (75%), Latino voters (64%) and 18-34 year olds (52%) lag behind the national average in election interest, w/ young voters especially trailing past years,” Wasserman added. “If Trump wins tomorrow, that will be a big part of the story.”
I’ll be damned Trump already won.
I think he’s going to be well over 300 EV at the end of the night.
Here’s hoping.
Stay vigilant, they keep pushing that stupid women voters tripe.
I want more than that. Make everything red.
I feel sick. Too close.
Wait for the 2am vote dumps……
320
I’ll gladly take it!
Anything 270+ will work. Praying we find a way to exceed 300 though.
Why do we (meaning Yay Trump people) keep letting the other side know how many votes they need to find to snatch victory away?
Be careful with that thinking - it can only lead to sorrow.
They’ll be calling Georgia for him shortly... After that, the MSM will blow a gasket.
The best part... If God willing, DJT is allowed to win, much of the old guard evil democrats will die off while he is president. And if not him, maybe a Vance presidency in 2028. Biden, Pelosi, Shumer, James Brown, er, I mean Maxine Waters, and all they will have left are the insane radicals who hate America and represent foreign nations (Ilhan, Tlaib, AOC) who can never build a national coalition. It will be glorious.
One ‘Rat official has already bragged about the “blue shift” that happens late at night. He means, after they find out how many votes they have to manufacture, er, find that were “inadvertently overlooked.”
If Kamala Harris can get 251 EV this country is in very serious trouble.
Georgia
Trump 181,125 56.74%
Harris 136,653 42.81%
For some strange reason, this reminds me of Schroedinger’s cat.
I guess something like this election is what it was about....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.