A tour of the 7½ key swing states
There’s a 92 percent chance that this is where the election is decided.
In 16 years of running election forecasts, I’ve never seen such a close election.
Our polling averages in seven swing states — in alphabetical order: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are within 2 percentage points. A systematic polling error, or a shift in the race in the final six weeks of the campaign, could result in one candidate sweeping all of these states. In our simulations this morning, Kamala Harris swept all seven of these battlegrounds 20 percent of the time, and Donald Trump did in 23 percent of the simulations.
But that leaves a majority of cases where the election will probably be close, and it’s worth sorting through the electoral math in case it is. So that’s what today’s newsletter is about. It’s going to be rather prosaic. I’ll go through the most important states in descending likelihood of Kamala Harris winning them — starting with my home state, Michigan.
Michigan: Harris win probability 63%. Tipping-point probability 14%.
Michigan has been somewhat to the left of the other Blue Wall states in recent elections. Since 2000, it’s voted Democratic by an average of 6.2 percentage points, versus 3.8 points for Pennsylvania and 3.5 points for Wisconsin.
One potential concern for Harris in the state is Michigan’s substantial Arab American population in the event that some voters shift their votes because of Gaza. But Harris seems to have somewhat defused the issue relative to Joe Biden, and it’s only about 2 percent of the electorate — and the war isn’t necessarily a voting issue for rank-and-file swing voters. The polling in Michigan has been a bit odd — with some Harris +7s and Harris +5s, along with other polls showing the race as a tie. But if you average the numbers out, it’s the one swing state you could probably say is leaning Harris rather than a pure toss-up.