Our Final 2024 Ratings

Author: Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik, and J. Miles Coleman
Published on: November 4, 2024
Published in: 2024 Governor

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The polling, and our intel, converge on the idea that Arizona has emerged as Trump’s top opportunity for a win among the 7 key swing states.

What has surprised us down the stretch, meanwhile, is that Georgia and North Carolina are both gettable for Kamala Harris. A week or two ago, we were taking it almost for granted that while these states would of course be close, they would break toward Trump at the end. This is now far from guaranteed. Trump himself was campaigning in North Carolina on Saturday, Sunday, and today. While we have heard some arguments as to why this isn’t that big of a deal, we do take this as something of a signal about that state, particularly when combined with our own intel and the stubbornly close polls. Nevada, also apparently super-close, saw Republicans get out to a lead in the advance vote, leaving it an open question as to whether Democrats could catch up.

Of the Industrial North battlegrounds, our strong prior has been that Michigan was likely to be the bluest of these states. We are sticking with that prior belief despite obvious signs that Harris has not nailed it down. ... Pennsylvania may be the biggest wild card, and the most responsive to whatever has (or has not) changed in the final days of the campaign, because it ultimately does not have that much advance vote. Something like 70% or even more of the total Pennsylvania vote will be cast on Election Day, clearly the highest of the 7 key battlegrounds, according to calculations we made from turnout expert Michael McDonald’s overall turnout forecasts and reporting of votes cast so far.

Our prior belief heading into the election season was that Wisconsin would be the hardest Industrial North state for Democrats to hold, both because it was the closest state Joe Biden carried in the region and because it skews whiter and more rural than the other two. Yet this does not seem to be the elite consensus down the stretch of the campaign nor is it what polling averages indicate: Harris is doing very slightly better in Wisconsin polling compared to Pennsylvania. This, in addition to the Keystone State having the most electoral votes of the 7 key states, explains the conventional wisdom that suggests Pennsylvania is the most important. We do also have to remember that 2016-2020 Trump polling underestimation was greatest in Wisconsin, although such a large error this time would suggest Trump winning the state by several points, which seems far-fetched.

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