Thank you for reading my analysis of current polling in the 2024 Presidential race. This will be updated every Monday evening until the election. If you have friends who you think would be interested in receiving these updates, please share this with them! There is no cost to subscribe to these updates.

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I had hoped to do a long intro this week explaining why I think Kamala Harris will win the election tomorrow, but I’m actually swamped on this Election Eve, and so a shorter email (with a bit less analysis) is all I have time for.

As of today’s update, Harris has a lead of 1 point or more in enough states to win 257 electoral votes, and a lead of less than 0.5% in my polling average of Pennsylvania, which would put her at 276 electoral votes, and make her the next President of the United States.

Who wins tomorrow will come down to whether there was a polling error that favored one of the candidates, and who has the better ground game. In both of these areas, I think Harris is more likely than Trump to have an advantage.

There are three main reasons I think Kamala Harris will be elected President tomorrow:

1. Trump has never led in enough states to win 270 electoral votes in my averages. Even though certain states (looking at you, Pennsylvania) have tightened over the last six weeks — and at one point Nevada tipped ever-so-slightly red in my averages — Trump never led in enough states to win. I have felt like this race has been heading towards a 276 to 262 Harris victory since October, and that remains my expectation (though perhaps it’ll be Iowa, not Nevada, that gives Harris that 6 vote margin).

2. I believe that the polls are more likely to be overestimating Trump than Harris. After two presidential elections wherein Donald Trump’s share of the vote was underestimated, pollsters were hellbent on not falling into that trap again. Nate Cohn in The New York Times discussed the ways pollsters had changed their methods to capture more Trump supporters in their samples, and the effort by pollsters to herd towards close results has been clear for weeks. If pollsters got that right, then we might see the averages be close to the final election results. However, I think that there’s evidence that they overcorrected. Congressional district polling, where there’s less pressure on pollsters, has shown a more favorable environment for Harris. The Des Moines Register poll of Iowa, where Ann pSelzer uses a methodology that involves very little weighting and which is very similar to more-accurate internal campaign polling, is another bit of evidence that Harris might be more likely to over perform. If she over performs the polls by a little then she wins the key states comfortably; if she does so by a lot, then she could sweep the swing states. However, there remains a possibility that Trump over performs, in which case he wins. I just see no signs of that being likely.

3. Harris has one hell of a ground game. I canvassed for Harris last week in Pennsylvania, and the data was solid and the responses on the doors were great. She has an army of volunteers hitting the doors there and in the other key states. In many battleground states this weekend, Harris field offices ran out of turf because so many people showed up to help. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s GOTV effort for Trump seems chaotic and badly run. Reports from Democratic canvassers are that there’s no signs of an active Trump field program in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan. I talked to someone doing field in Reno, Nevada, for Harris last night, and he said that there’s some Trump activity but that it doesn’t compare to the Harris effort. I came up through electoral politics in field — canvassing as a kid, and then running field campaigns early in my career. I am a believer in the value of direct voter contact. Us field types will often talk about races “in a field margin,” meaning around 1% of the vote. If there is such a thing as a “field margin,” if voter contact quality and intensity matters, then Harris is well-prepared to turn tied-in-polling Pennsylvania into a blue-when-voting state tomorrow. Someone has to win Pennsylvania — and since there’s clear signs Harris comes into Election Day with a lead thanks to mail voting and has a better GOTV program than Trump and Musk, I’d much rather be us than them in this situation.

So that’s my call: Harris has the edge, however narrow, when it comes to getting out her vote and bringing home victory tomorrow. But she can’t do it alone.

If you haven’t voted yet, be sure to vote for Kamala Harris tomorrow.

And if you have time to make last minute GOTV calls to get voters to the polls tomorrow — do it! Sign up here to support Harris’s last GOTV push to victory.

Road to 270 Electoral Votes

Neither candidate holds measurable leads in enough states to win if the election were held today based on my polling averages. Which, since the election is tomorrow, means that it could be a long night on Tuesday.

Harris has a lead in Pennsylvania that rounds to zero — but if she wins there, she wins the election. I think she will win there, and it’s better for Harris to have a narrow lead than for Trump to be narrowly ahead.

If you count leads that round to zero, at no point since I started tracking polling averages in August has Harris dropped below 270 electoral college votes.

The methodology used to calculate these averages is described towards the end of this post.

🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 1 point in Michigan (15 electoral votes), Nevada (6 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). This is a shift of 1 point to Harris in Nevada and Wisconsin in the last week.

🟣 Neither candidate appears to lead in Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), but Harris has a slight edge.

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 1 point in Georgia (16 electoral votes) and North Carolina (16 electoral votes).

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 2 points in Arizona (11 electoral votes).

In the national popular vote, Harris appears to lead by around 2 points. This is unchanged from last week.

The present tipping point state is Pennsylvania, and the current differential between the tipping point margin and the national popular vote is 1.4 points, a decrease of 0.2 points since last week. We could be looking at a very, very low differential between the tipping point state and the national popular vote.

A uniform standard polling error towards either candidate would lead to them sweeping all seven swing states.

Polling in the Past Week

As befits the finals days of an incredibly close election, there was a ton of polling last week. While tighter in the national race, the numbers were pretty good for Harris in the key swing states (and that’s not including the surprisingly strong poll for Harris in Iowa, which isn’t even tracked in my numbers), though Pennsylvania remained extremely tight. And in last week’s polling, North Carolina was almost as close as Pennsylvania!

There were 25 national polls released last week.

Among the highest quality pollsters, who released about half of those polls, results ranged from a 2-point Trump lead (Atlas Intel, the only high-quality pollster to show Trump ahead) to a 3-point (Cygnal, Ipsos for ABC, and Noble Predictive) or 4-point lead for Harris (Marist College).

Pollsters with less sterling track records ranged from a 3-point Trump lead (J.L. Partners) to a 4-point Harris lead (Morning Consult).

Eighteen national polls last week showed a Harris lead, three showed a Trump lead, and four showed an exact tie.

🔵 Harris held a lead of 1.4 points in a weighted average of all national polls completed in the week of October 27, compared to a 1.8 point advantaged in surveys completed the week before, and a 1.2 point lead in polls completed the week of October 13.

Four of the seven swing states showed movement towards Harris in the last week, and she held leads in the states she needs to reach 276 electoral votes.

In Michigan, 24 new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 1.5 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 2.8 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Wisconsin, 16 new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.2 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Nevada, nine new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 1.1 points in the weighted average, compared to a 0.2 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Pennsylvania, 20 new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.2 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.6 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In North Carolina, 14 new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.3 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Georgia, 13 new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.1 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.3 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Arizona, 18 new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 2.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.2 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

Methodology

The polling numbers discussed above are weighted, adjusted, and blended averages based on pretty much every poll released since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee in late July.

To produce these averages I take the following steps:

1. I collect polls from Twitter, aggregators and news websites. In cases when pollsters release more than one survey at the same time, I preference the head to head Harris versus Trump polls over the broader field polls (because I believe that polling greatly overstates third party vote shares) and likely voter surveys over registered voter surveys. I do not include “all adult” polls.

2. I weight the polls by pollster quality and time since completion. For pollster quality, I used the grades from FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin translated into a 0.0 to 1.0 value. Pollsters with no such ranking are still included, but with a fairly low weight. Likely voter surveys are given 10% more weight than a registered voter survey from the same pollster would be. The weight given to a poll falls every seven days after its completion, to preference newer data over older data, and is zeroed out six weeks after the poll came out of the field. I do not adjust the weight given to a survey based on sample size.

3. I then adjust those weighted averages to split the undecideds and set the projected third party share of the vote at around 2 percent. This completes the process for creating my estimated national popular vote, but to create a final estimated vote in each state, there’s one more step.

4. I then take the margin in my estimated national popular vote, and combine it with a weighted average of the differential between each swing state/district’s 2016 and 2020 results and the national 2016 and 2020 results. This gives me an estimate of what the margin in each swing state/district would be based just on historical patterns and my estimated national popular vote margin. I then combine these regressions with the weighted, adjusted average for each state/district at a 20% to 80% weight, giving me a blended number and a final estimated vote in each swing state/district. In cases where there a very few, or only very old, polls in a specific state or district, I increase the weight of regression based on national polling.

While others might quibble with one part or another of this methodology, I’m comfortable with it. It’s my best attempt to take the data available and use it to create a fair estimate of the present state of the presidential campaign without my partisan preferences influencing my analysis.

If you have a significant problem with any of the steps above, please just accept that I’m not going to change my process at this point. If you want to do your own analysis, you almost certainly have Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers (which is what I use) on your computer. Take a crack at it — math is fun!

Kamala Harris for President

While the point of these averages is to try to create an estimate of where the presidential race now stands in a data-based and impartial manner, I am not impartial. I don’t think any of us should be.

Kamala Harris is the right choice for President of the United States. She has been an excellent Vice President. She has cast tie breaking votes on landmark legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. She is running on a platform built around addressing real challenges facing the American people. She has plans to address prices and the cost of living. She has plans to address our nation’s critical housing shortage. She has plans to make it easier for new parents to afford the raise a family, for seniors to afford the prescription drugs we need, for young people to afford college. She supports fully restoring a woman’s right to choose across our nation, and will stand up against the radical right-wing agenda embodied by Project 2025, which is a direct threat to the freedoms and civil liberties Americans hold dear. She will stand up for our allies and democracy at home and abroad. She will not abandon Ukraine or NATO. She will work to build an economy of opportunity, one where we tackle climate change by embracing new technologies and creating energy abundance, one where it’s easier to start a business, one where everyone has a fair shot to achieve their dreams.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square, and responded to that fact by whipping a mob into a frenzy and sitting back and doing nothing while they stormed the United States Capitol. You probably watched this attack on our nation on your television. I got to experience it firsthand as I hid in a secure room with my boss while the heart of American democracy was defiled. This was the climactic moment of a terrible presidency that divided our nation, that diminished our standing in the world, that packed our courts with theocrats who have used their power to undermine the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Four years ago, 81 million Americans voted to fire Trump. Today, he’s surrounding himself with anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts, anti-gay activists who coddle dictators like Assad and Putin, and fanatics who proudly spread divisive and dangerous lies.

Kamala Harris has spent her life working for a better America as a prosecutor, a Senator, and Vice President. She’s an inspiring American story.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life nursing grievances and caring only about himself. He embodies everything our parents told us not to be when we grow up.

Vote for Kamala Harris on or before November 5, and if you can, please contribute to her campaign.

Local Politics Matter, Too!

And while I have your attention, I feel compelled to mention that I’m running for re-election on the Democratic ticket for Alexandria City Council this November. Over the three years that I have been a member of the City Council, I have worked to address our city’s affordable housing crisis, to do our part in the fight against climate change, to improve public safety by supporting our first responders, to support our young people by increasing funding for our schools and our senior citizens on fixed incomes by reducing their property taxes. I’ve also led the Council in standing up for Alexandria’s values by defending our abortion clinics in the wake of Dobbs and supporting our schools as they stood up to Governor Youngkin’s attacks on trans students.

I’m proud of my record in Alexandria, and of our city’s role in keeping Virginia blue. If you’d like to contribute to help me, and my fellow Democratic nominees, win in November and turn out the vote for Kamala Harris and Time Kaine, you can do so here.

Thank you for reading my analysis of current polling in the 2024 Presidential race. This will be updated every Monday evening until the election. If you have friends who you think would be interested in receiving these updates, please share this with them! There is no cost to subscribe to these updates.

Share

My introduction to this email will be a bit quick this week, as I am on my way to Pennsylvania to canvass for Kamala Harris. There are eight days left before Election Day, if you haven’t volunteered to help Harris win, now is the time to do so!

Last week, the previous two weeks of tightening polls set off a wave of unrest amongst voters who are, quite reasonably, scared about a potential Trump victory. This caused a very real vibes shift, but it arrived at an ironic time because the polls generally stopped tightening this week — and, in fact, Harris gained a bit of ground in my weighted averages.

The election is still a toss-up. Forecast models have it basically 50/50. The polls are effectively tied. I can go into why I think Harris is well-placed to win a coin flip race — and I will, next week.

Right now, what matters is doing the volunteer work needed to get out the vote and bring victory home. Please, if you care about the future of our nation, of our democracy, or of our world, use this last week before Election Day to do your part by volunteering with the Harris campaign.

Road to 270 Electoral Votes

Neither candidate holds measurable leads in enough states to win if the election were held today based on my polling averages. Harris has leads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada that round to zero — so if she holds those she’d win with 276 electoral votes, but can you really call a lead of less than half a point a lead? The methodology used to calculate these averages is described towards the end of this post.

🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 1 point in Michigan (15 electoral votes). This is a shift of 1 point to Harris in the last week.

🟣 Neither candidate appears to lead in Nevada (6 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes).

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 1 point in Georgia (16 electoral votes) and North Carolina (16 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point away from Trump in Georgia in the last week.

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 2 points in Arizona (11 electoral votes).

In the national popular vote, Harris appears to lead by around 2 points.

The present tipping point state is Wisconsin, and the current differential between the tipping point margin and the national popular vote is 1.6 points, a decrease of 0.1 points since last week..

A uniform standard polling error towards either candidate would lead to them sweeping all seven swing states.

Polling in the Past Week

There was a lot of polling last week, and at the national level it was better for Harris than the surveys completed the week before. Further, the higher quality pollsters reported better numbers for Harris than polling firms of more marginal regard.

Amongst the highest-quality pollsters, an Ipsos poll for ABC reported a 4 point Harris lead. Monmouth, an Ipsos poll for Reuters, and two YouGov polls (one for The Economist and one for The Times of London) all gave Harris a 3 point lead. While another YouGov, this time for CBS, showed a 1 point edge for Harris and a New York Times / Siena poll was tied.

Other pollsters were a bit all over the map: Morning Consult reported a 4 point Harris lead. An SSRS poll for CNN and a survey conducted by Tufts University gave Harris a 1 point edge. Harris X, Redfield & Wilton, and Fabrizio / GBAO showed Trump ahead by 1, 2, and 3 points, respectively. And then there was Big Village: their survey of likely voters gave Harris a whopping 7 point lead. They get the “we don’t herd our results to the media narrative” prize of the week, I think.

Finally, the TIPP tracking poll continues to bounce around, showing Harris up 3 in a three day sample ending on October 23, and then the race tied in a sample ending on October 26.

🔵 Harris held a lead of 1.8 points in a weighted average of all national polls completed in the week of October 20, compared to a 1.2 point advantaged in surveys completed the week before, and a 2.7 point lead in polls completed the week of October 6.

State polling was a bit more mixed last week, with Harris seeing a major gain in Michigan, and important shift towards her in Pennsylvania, and a bit of improvement in Arizona, while Wisconsin got tighter, and Nevada continued to bounce back and forth between her and Trump. But in the three states she needs to get to 270 (and by that I mean exactly 270) electoral votes, Harris was in the lead.

In Michigan, three new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 2.8 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.6 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Pennsylvania, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.6 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.1 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Wisconsin, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.2 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.9 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Nevada, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.2 points in the weighted average, compared to a 0.9 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In North Carolina, six new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.1 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Georgia, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.1 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Arizona, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.5 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

Comparison to Other Aggregators

Below is a table that compares my current projected margin in each of the seven swing states with that of other polling aggregators. Some of these websites also publish forecasts of the eventual November 5 results, but what I am listing here are their estimated margins of where the polls stand in each state today. The row at the bottom is the previous week’s average in each state, to provide a sense of how the averages of these aggregators have changed.

The divergence seen amongst aggregators last week has continued. Of the six aggregators, two (Split Ticket and me) have Harris leading in states worth 276 electoral votes, while VoteHub would show her winning with exactly 270. Nate Silver’s averages would point to a 281 electoral vote win by Trump, with FiveThirtyEight showing Trump presently ahead in 287 electoral votes worth of states. The Economist continues to be the most Trump-friendly, showing him leading with 297 electoral votes.

In the average of the averages, Harris leads in 257 electoral votes, Trump is ahead in 262 electoral votes, and, unsurprisingly, it all would come down to Pennsylvania.

Also, it’s worth noting that in the average of averages, Harris’s position improved over the last week in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, and didn’t move in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump gained ground in Nevada and North Carolina.

None of these leads are large enough to survive even a standard polling error.

Which, again, is to say that this thing is as close as can be. So get out there and volunteer this week for Kamala Harris!

Methodology

The polling numbers discussed above are weighted, adjusted, and blended averages based on pretty much every poll released since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee in late July.

To produce these averages I take the following steps:

1. I collect polls from Twitter, aggregators and news websites. In cases when pollsters release more than one survey at the same time, I preference the head to head Harris versus Trump polls over the broader field polls (because I believe that polling greatly overstates third party vote shares) and likely voter surveys over registered voter surveys. I do not include “all adult” polls.

2. I weight the polls by pollster quality and time since completion. For pollster quality, I used the grades from FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin translated into a 0.0 to 1.0 value. Pollsters with no such ranking are still included, but with a fairly low weight. Likely voter surveys are given 10% more weight than a registered voter survey from the same pollster would be. The weight given to a poll falls every seven days after its completion, to preference newer data over older data, and is zeroed out six weeks after the poll came out of the field. I do not adjust the weight given to a survey based on sample size.

3. I then adjust those weighted averages to split the undecideds and set the projected third party share of the vote at around 2 percent. This completes the process for creating my estimated national popular vote, but to create a final estimated vote in each state, there’s one more step.

4. I then take the margin in my estimated national popular vote, and combine it with a weighted average of the differential between each swing state/district’s 2016 and 2020 results and the national 2016 and 2020 results. This gives me an estimate of what the margin in each swing state/district would be based just on historical patterns and my estimated national popular vote margin. I then combine these regressions with the weighted, adjusted average for each state/district at a 20% to 80% weight, giving me a blended number and a final estimated vote in each swing state/district. In cases where there a very few, or only very old, polls in a specific state or district, I increase the weight of regression based on national polling.

While others might quibble with one part or another of this methodology, I’m comfortable with it. It’s my best attempt to take the data available and use it to create a fair estimate of the present state of the presidential campaign without my partisan preferences influencing my analysis.

If you have a significant problem with any of the steps above, please just accept that I’m not going to change my process at this point. If you want to do your own analysis, you almost certainly have Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers (which is what I use) on your computer. Take a crack at it — math is fun!

Kamala Harris for President

While the point of these averages is to try to create an estimate of where the presidential race now stands in a data-based and impartial manner, I am not impartial. I don’t think any of us should be.

Kamala Harris is the right choice for President of the United States. She has been an excellent Vice President. She has cast tie breaking votes on landmark legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. She is running on a platform built around addressing real challenges facing the American people. She has plans to address prices and the cost of living. She has plans to address our nation’s critical housing shortage. She has plans to make it easier for new parents to afford the raise a family, for seniors to afford the prescription drugs we need, for young people to afford college. She supports fully restoring a woman’s right to choose across our nation, and will stand up against the radical right-wing agenda embodied by Project 2025, which is a direct threat to the freedoms and civil liberties Americans hold dear. She will stand up for our allies and democracy at home and abroad. She will not abandon Ukraine or NATO. She will work to build an economy of opportunity, one where we tackle climate change by embracing new technologies and creating energy abundance, one where it’s easier to start a business, one where everyone has a fair shot to achieve their dreams.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square, and responded to that fact by whipping a mob into a frenzy and sitting back and doing nothing while they stormed the United States Capitol. You probably watched this attack on our nation on your television. I got to experience it firsthand as I hid in a secure room with my boss while the heart of American democracy was defiled. This was the climactic moment of a terrible presidency that divided our nation, that diminished our standing in the world, that packed our courts with theocrats who have used their power to undermine the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Four years ago, 81 million Americans voted to fire Trump. Today, he’s surrounding himself with anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts, anti-gay activists who coddle dictators like Assad and Putin, and fanatics who proudly spread divisive and dangerous lies.

Kamala Harris has spent her life working for a better America as a prosecutor, a Senator, and Vice President. She’s an inspiring American story.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life nursing grievances and caring only about himself. He embodies everything our parents told us not to be when we grow up.

Vote for Kamala Harris on or before November 5, and if you can, please contribute to her campaign.

Local Politics Matter, Too!

And while I have your attention, I feel compelled to mention that I’m running for re-election on the Democratic ticket for Alexandria City Council this November. Over the three years that I have been a member of the City Council, I have worked to address our city’s affordable housing crisis, to do our part in the fight against climate change, to improve public safety by supporting our first responders, to support our young people by increasing funding for our schools and our senior citizens on fixed incomes by reducing their property taxes. I’ve also led the Council in standing up for Alexandria’s values by defending our abortion clinics in the wake of Dobbs and supporting our schools as they stood up to Governor Youngkin’s attacks on trans students.

I’m proud of my record in Alexandria, and of our city’s role in keeping Virginia blue. If you’d like to contribute to help me, and my fellow Democratic nominees, win in November and turn out the vote for Kamala Harris and Time Kaine, you can do so here.

Thank you for reading my analysis of current polling in the 2024 Presidential race. This will be updated every Monday evening until the election. If you have friends who you think would be interested in receiving these updates, please share this with them! There is no cost to subscribe to these updates.

Share

Last week’s update saw Wisconsin and Nevada tighten into ties (with no candidate leading by even 1% of the vote) due to Trump-leaning polling coming in at the state level. This week, Harris saw her state-level polling improve in most of the critical states… but her margin in national polling slipped by around 1 point. Because national polling is factored into my state by state estimated margins, this nudged Michigan and Pennsylvania into “tied” status. Across the board, Harris now leads in those four key swing states by less than 0.5% in my polling averages. She does, however, still lead, which is better than trailing.

Are Republican-backing pollsters tilting the averages towards Trump? This is a question that has popped up a lot in recent days. Every pollster has a “house effect,” due to how they construct their likely voter screen or weight their sample. There are significantly more Republican pollsters releasing data as we approach Election Day compared to Democratic-aligned pollsters. FiveThirtyEight did an analysis to determine if these polls were messing with their averages, and found that the Republican pollsters moved the averages about 0.4 percent towards Trump (though more in Pennsylvania). If you want to mentally adjust averages you see to account for Republicans “flooding the zone,” then just presume that Harris is doing about half a point better in reality than she appears to be doing in averages. But don’t take too much solace in that: we still need to get out and win this thing.

The Presidential race is tied. Either candidate can easily win. This isn’t reason to despair. Given the national mood, the worldwide trend against incumbents, and Biden’s approval ratings, it’s a sign of great strength that Harris has as good (or maybe slightly better) of a chance of winning as Trump. But she can’t win this election on her own. We all need to help. Volunteer this week for Kamala Harris!

If we outwork the Republicans, and we can, then we will win.

Road to 270 Electoral Votes

Neither candidate holds measurable leads in enough states to win if the election were held today based on my polling averages. Harris has a less than 0.5% lead in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada (which in last week’s averages tilted ever-so-slightly towards Trump). The methodology used to calculate these averages is described towards the end of this post.

🟣 Neither candidate appears to lead in Michigan (15 electoral votes), Nevada (6 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point away from Harris in Michigan and Pennsylvania in the last week, and a shift of around half a point towards Harris in Nevada.

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 1 point in North Carolina (16 electoral votes).

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 2 points in Georgia (16 electoral votes) and Arizona (11 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point towards Trump in Georgia in the last week.

In the national popular vote, Harris appears to lead by around 2 points. That is a shift of 1 point towards Trump nationally in the last week.

The present tipping point state is Pennsylvania, and the current differential between the tipping point margin and the national popular vote is 1.7 points, a decrease of 1 point since last week. Trump gaining nationally but not really gaining much in the swing states cut deeply into the Electoral College’s Republican tilt.

A uniform standard polling error towards either candidate would lead to them sweeping all seven swing states. While they feel very different a 1 point for Trump or a 1 point lead for Harris doesn’t really mean much in terms of who will actually win. This is the closest Presidential race in decades.

Polling in the Past Week

Last week was a tough week of Harris in the statewide polling. This week was a somewhat tough week in the national polling. A lot of national polls were released this week: 15, though two of those were from pollsters who released two surveys.

Amongst the highest-quality pollsters, a Marist poll showed a 5 point Harris lead, while Marquette showed the race a tie and Atlas Intel reported a 3 point lead for Trump. A YouGov poll for The Economist came in with a 4 point margin for Harris, and both Emerson and Suffolk Universities showed Harris leading by 1 point.

Three other high quality pollsters came in with divergent numbers: a 2 point lead for Trump in a Beacon and Shaw poll for Fox News and a 3 point edge for Harris in both an Ipsos survey done for Reuters and a Fairleigh Dickinson poll.

Rounding out the weeks polls were surveys from RMG Research (Harris up 1), Quantus (Harris up 1), TIPP Insights (Harris up 2 on October 17, Trump up 1 on October 20), and Harris X (Harris up 2 in two surveys for different clients).

In most of these surveys, Harris’s number was very similar to what has been seen in polls in the last few weeks, while Trump’s number was a marked improvement. This could represent more Trump voters passing the “likely voter” screen, or perhaps Trump-reluctant undecideds coming home to the Republican nominee as the race closes.

🔵 Harris held a lead of 1.2 points in a weighted average of all national polls completed in the week of October 13, compared to a 2.7 point advantaged in surveys completed in both of the two preceding weeks.

Harris got better numbers in swing state polling the week of December 13 than she did the week before, which, as we all know, is ultimately more important. Weighted averages week over week shifted to Harris by 2.8 points in Nevada, 1.6 points in Wisconsin, and 1.3 points in Michigan, but slipped by 0.4 points in Pennsylvania.

In Nevada, five new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.9 points in the weighted average, compared to a 1.9 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Wisconsin, six new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.9 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.7 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Michigan, eight new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.6 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.7 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Pennsylvania, six new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.1 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.5 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In North Carolina, seven new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.1 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.4 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Georgia, eight new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.1 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.9 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Arizona, six new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.5 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 2.3 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

Comparison to Other Aggregators

Below is a table that compares my current projected margin in each of the seven swing states with that of other polling aggregators. Some of these websites also publish forecasts of the eventual November 5 results, but what I am listing here are their estimated margins of where the polls stand in each state today. The row at the bottom is the previous week’s average in each state, to provide a sense of how the averages of these aggregators have changed.

For the first time, there are major divergences in these polling averages. Nate Silver has Pennsylvania tied, while The Economist has swung hard towards Trump, indicating that their averages are probably more sensitive to shifts in more recent polling. Pennsylvania is tied in the average of averages right now.

If any of these averages were accurate down to a tenth of a point (they are not), then Harris would win with 276 electoral votes in my average and Split Ticket’s average. Harris would win with exactly 270 electoral votes in VoteHub’s average. It would all hinge on coin-flip Pennsylvania in Nate Silver’s average. Trump would win with 281 electoral votes in FiveThirtyEight’s average. Trump would win with at least 291 electoral votes in The Economist’s average.

Which, again, is to say that this thing is riding the knife’s edge and can go either way. So get out there and volunteer this week for Kamala Harris!

Methodology

The polling numbers discussed above are weighted, adjusted, and blended averages based on pretty much every poll released since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee in late July.

To produce these averages I take the following steps:

1. I collect polls from Twitter, aggregators and news websites. In cases when pollsters release more than one survey at the same time, I preference the head to head Harris versus Trump polls over the broader field polls (because I believe that polling greatly overstates third party vote shares) and likely voter surveys over registered voter surveys. I do not include “all adult” polls.

2. I weight the polls by pollster quality and time since completion. For pollster quality, I used the grades from FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin translated into a 0.0 to 1.0 value. Pollsters with no such ranking are still included, but with a fairly low weight. Likely voter surveys are given 10% more weight than a registered voter survey from the same pollster would be. The weight given to a poll falls every seven days after its completion, to preference newer data over older data, and is zeroed out six weeks after the poll came out of the field. I do not adjust the weight given to a survey based on sample size.

3. I then adjust those weighted averages to split the undecideds and set the projected third party share of the vote at around 2 percent. This completes the process for creating my estimated national popular vote, but to create a final estimated vote in each state, there’s one more step.

4. I then take the margin in my estimated national popular vote, and combine it with a weighted average of the differential between each swing state/district’s 2016 and 2020 results and the national 2016 and 2020 results. This gives me an estimate of what the margin in each swing state/district would be based just on historical patterns and my estimated national popular vote margin. I then combine these regressions with the weighted, adjusted average for each state/district at a 20% to 80% weight, giving me a blended number and a final estimated vote in each swing state/district. In cases where there a very few, or only very old, polls in a specific state or district, I increase the weight of regression based on national polling.

While others might quibble with one part or another of this methodology, I’m comfortable with it. It’s my best attempt to take the data available and use it to create a fair estimate of the present state of the presidential campaign without my partisan preferences influencing my analysis.

If you have a significant problem with any of the steps above, please just accept that I’m not going to change my process at this point. If you want to do your own analysis, you almost certainly have Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers (which is what I use) on your computer. Take a crack at it — math is fun!

Kamala Harris for President

While the point of these averages is to try to create an estimate of where the presidential race now stands in a data-based and impartial manner, I am not impartial. I don’t think any of us should be.

Kamala Harris is the right choice for President of the United States. She has been an excellent Vice President. She has cast tie breaking votes on landmark legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. She is running on a platform built around addressing real challenges facing the American people. She has plans to address prices and the cost of living. She has plans to address our nation’s critical housing shortage. She has plans to make it easier for new parents to afford the raise a family, for seniors to afford the prescription drugs we need, for young people to afford college. She supports fully restoring a woman’s right to choose across our nation, and will stand up against the radical right-wing agenda embodied by Project 2025, which is a direct threat to the freedoms and civil liberties Americans hold dear. She will stand up for our allies and democracy at home and abroad. She will not abandon Ukraine or NATO. She will work to build an economy of opportunity, one where we tackle climate change by embracing new technologies and creating energy abundance, one where it’s easier to start a business, one where everyone has a fair shot to achieve their dreams.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square, and responded to that fact by whipping a mob into a frenzy and sitting back and doing nothing while they stormed the United States Capitol. You probably watched this attack on our nation on your television. I got to experience it firsthand as I hid in a secure room with my boss while the heart of American democracy was defiled. This was the climactic moment of a terrible presidency that divided our nation, that diminished our standing in the world, that packed our courts with theocrats who have used their power to undermine the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Four years ago, 81 million Americans voted to fire Trump. Today, he’s surrounding himself with anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts, anti-gay activists who coddle dictators like Assad and Putin, and fanatics who proudly spread divisive and dangerous lies.

Kamala Harris has spent her life working for a better America as a prosecutor, a Senator, and Vice President. She’s an inspiring American story.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life nursing grievances and caring only about himself. He embodies everything our parents told us not to be when we grow up.

Vote for Kamala Harris on or before November 5, and if you can, please contribute to her campaign.

Local Politics Matter, Too!

And while I have your attention, I feel compelled to mention that I’m running for re-election on the Democratic ticket for Alexandria City Council this November. Over the three years that I have been a member of the City Council, I have worked to address our city’s affordable housing crisis, to do our part in the fight against climate change, to improve public safety by supporting our first responders, to support our young people by increasing funding for our schools and our senior citizens on fixed incomes by reducing their property taxes. I’ve also led the Council in standing up for Alexandria’s values by defending our abortion clinics in the wake of Dobbs and supporting our schools as they stood up to Governor Youngkin’s attacks on trans students.

I’m proud of my record in Alexandria, and of our city’s role in keeping Virginia blue. If you’d like to contribute to help me, and my fellow Democratic nominees, win in November and turn out the vote for Kamala Harris and Time Kaine, you can do so here.

Thank you for reading my analysis of current polling in the 2024 Presidential race. This will be updated every Monday evening until the election. If you have friends who you think would be interested in receiving these updates, please share this with them! There is no cost to subscribe to these updates.

Share

Let’s not sugarcoat things: Harris’s margins slipped noticeably this past week in all but one of the swing states she’s been leading in since mid-August. That’s not reason to panic, but it is reason for Harris and those supporting her to double down on their efforts and step up their game, particularly in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The movement in the polls, while noteworthy, does not yet indicate a major change in the race. The race between Harris and Trump has been essentially tied since she established herself as the Democratic nominee in August — which was a huge boost to Democrats, as Joe Biden was losing badly to Trump before he dropped out. Last week, a standard error in Trump’s favor would have led him to winning every single swing state, and a standard error in Harris’s would have delivered her the same. That is still true today.

Yet while the race has been rather steady-state for months, in the last week the slight shift towards Trump was perceptible. Which leads to the question, why? There are a few possible answers:

1. Trump is actually doing a bit better now than he was before. This is the most likely reason for the shift. Since entering the race, Harris has received a number of “bounces” — the joyful response to her entering, the post-convention period, and the afterglow of her strong performance in the debate. All of those have faded (and the convention bounce was small, if it existed at all), and so the race has shifted ever so slightly back towards a tie. Which in this case means polling coming in a bit redder. To combat this, Harris’s campaign needs to keep the pressure on in the swing states, be smart with their cash advantage, and make sure they have the sort of ground game they’ll need to pull every single one of their voters to the polls. If you want to help, then volunteer to phone bank or canvass in one of the swing states!

2. Early vote screens are capturing more Trump voters than before. My averages eschew registered voter surveys when released alongside a likely voter survey from the same pollster. This has been helpful to Harris so far, as she’s doing better, usually, with likely voters. But as more marginal voters start engaging with the race, the likely voters screens might be keeping in more Trump voters. If that’s true, it’s a good thing in that Harris still has an edge and it makes a Trump-favoring polling error is slightly less likely.

3. A lot of the polls in the past week were from Republican pollsters. In 2022, a glut of Republican-leaning polls created a mirage that the GOP was going to do better than they actually did. If Republican pollsters, of which there are more and who release data more often, are “flooding the zone” again this year then that could mean some of this week’s movement towards Trump is similarly illusory. What am I doing to keep Republican polls out of my averages? Nothing. They’re still data from actual pollsters. Other than surveys from Trafalgar and Rasmussen, these Republican-affiliated polls get weighted and put into the average just like polls from non-partisan pollsters and Democratic-affiliated firms. It’s better to be motivated by polling that leans too Republican than lulled into a false sense of security by the opposite.

As it says on the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC. Presidential races tend to tighten in October. In a race that was already razor-thin, that is going to lead to a lot of noise. Remember that a poll that shows Harris up 1 in Pennsylvania and a poll that shows Trump up 1 in Pennsylvania are showing the same thing: a tied race where volunteer effort, candidate quality, and GOTV ground game can make all the difference.

In such a race, I’d rather be Harris than Trump.

Road to 270 Electoral Votes

Neither candidate holds measurable leads in enough states to win if the election were held today based on my polling averages. Harris has a less than 0.5% lead in Wisconsin, and Nevada has tipped ever so slightly to Trump. The methodology used to calculate these averages is described towards the end of this post.

🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 1 points in Michigan (15 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (10 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point away from Harris in Michigan in the last week.

🟣 Neither candidate appears to lead in Nevada (6 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point away from Harris in both states in the last week.

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 1 point in Georgia (16 electoral votes) and North Carolina (16 electoral votes).

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 2 points in Arizona (11 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point towards Trump in the last week.

In the national popular vote, Harris appears to lead by around 3 points.

The present tipping point state is Wisconsin, and the current differential between the tipping point margin and the national popular vote is 2.7 points, an increase of 0.5 point since last week.

Polling in the Past Week

Despite some really hard numbers for the Harris campaign in the swing states last week, Harris’s performance in national polling released last week was unchanged from the week before.

Amongst high-quality pollsters, the best number for Harris was a 4 point lead in a Siena poll for The New York Times. Similarly high-quality polls from YouGov (separately for The Atlantic and CBS News) showed Harris up 3, as did an Ipsos poll for ABC News. Pew Research Center, Noble Predictive and Hart (for NBC) were closer: Harris led by 1 point in the first two and the race was tied in the latter.

Two polls released by Morning Consult in the past week showed Harris with a 5 point lead, and Big Village also showed a big Harris edge at 4 points.

RMG Research and TIPP Insights, both Republican-leaning firms, gave Harris a 3 point lead nationally in polls released last week, while Redfield and Wilton and Co/efficient clocked her at 2 points up on Trump.

The chart below shows each week of national polling since Harris entered the race, weighted by pollster quality.

🔵 Harris held a lead of 2.7 points in a weighted average of all national polls completed in the week of October 6, the same as the week before, while she led by 3.7 points during the week of September 22.

As noted at the start of this email, there was a slew of polling released covering the swing states in the past week by Republican-aligned pollsters. But basically all swing state polling released last week showed some movement towards Trump.

In Pennsylvania, twelve new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.5 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.7 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In North Carolina, three new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.4 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.3 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Wisconsin, seven new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.7 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.9 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Michigan, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.7 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 1.1 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Georgia, six new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.9 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 0.6 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

In Nevada, five new polls were released last week, and the results were 🔴 Trump led by 1.9 points in the weighted average, compared to a tie in surveys released the week before. Without an outlier poll by Fabrizio & Lee that showed a 6 point Trump lead, his margin in polls released last week would have been only 0.3 points.

In Arizona, five new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 2.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to a 2.1 point Trump lead in surveys released the week before.

Comparison to Other Aggregators

Below is a table that compares my current projected margin in each of the seven swing states with that of other polling aggregators. Some of these websites also publish forecasts of the eventual November 5 results, but what I am listing here are their estimated margins of where the polls stand in each state today. I’ve also added a row at the bottom that is the previous week’s average in each state, to give readers a sense of how the averages of these aggregators have changed.

In the averages of these aggregators, the race tightened in six of the seven swing states. In this average of averages, Nevada is the closest state, but that’s likely due to the aforementioned Fabrizio & Lee outlier poll. Wisconsin has tightened to be as close as Pennsylvania and Georgia. The greater recency weight in my average tips Nevada ever-so-slightly red in my estimate, but I expect that will flip back to blue in a couple days when the outlier poll is down-weighted due to age.

It appears that my averaging methodology is more sensitive to new data than other aggregators, and that my averages across the board lean a bit more towards Trump than others. Even more reason to not panic, and instead work to win this thing.

Methodology

The polling numbers discussed above are weighted, adjusted, and blended averages based on pretty much every poll released since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee in late July.

To produce these averages I take the following steps:

1. I collect polls from Twitter, aggregators and news websites. In cases when pollsters release more than one survey at the same time, I preference the head to head Harris versus Trump polls over the broader field polls (because I believe that polling greatly overstates third party vote shares) and likely voter surveys over registered voter surveys. I do not include “all adult” polls.

2. I weight the polls by pollster quality and time since completion. For pollster quality, I used the grades from FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin translated into a 0.0 to 1.0 value. Pollsters with no such ranking are still included, but with a fairly low weight. Likely voter surveys are given 10% more weight than a registered voter survey from the same pollster would be. The weight given to a poll falls every seven days after its completion, to preference newer data over older data, and is zeroed out six weeks after the poll came out of the field. I do not adjust the weight given to a survey based on sample size.

3. I then adjust those weighted averages to split the undecideds and set the projected third party share of the vote at around 2 percent. This completes the process for creating my estimated national popular vote, but to create a final estimated vote in each state, there’s one more step.

4. I then take the margin in my estimated national popular vote, and combine it with a weighted average of the differential between each swing state/district’s 2016 and 2020 results and the national 2016 and 2020 results. This gives me an estimate of what the margin in each swing state/district would be based just on historical patterns and my estimated national popular vote margin. I then combine these regressions with the weighted, adjusted average for each state/district at a 20% to 80% weight, giving me a blended number and a final estimated vote in each swing state/district. In cases where there a very few, or only very old, polls in a specific state or district, I increase the weight of regression based on national polling.

While others might quibble with one part or another of this methodology, I’m comfortable with it. It’s my best attempt to take the data available and use it to create a fair estimate of the present state of the presidential campaign without my partisan preferences influencing my analysis.

If you have a significant problem with any of the steps above, please just accept that I’m not going to change my process at this point. If you want to do your own analysis, you almost certainly have Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers (which is what I use) on your computer. Take a crack at it — math is fun!

Kamala Harris for President

While the point of these averages is to try to create an estimate of where the presidential race now stands in a data-based and impartial manner, I am not impartial. I don’t think any of us should be.

Kamala Harris is the right choice for President of the United States. She has been an excellent Vice President. She has cast tie breaking votes on landmark legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. She is running on a platform built around addressing real challenges facing the American people. She has plans to address prices and the cost of living. She has plans to address our nation’s critical housing shortage. She has plans to make it easier for new parents to afford the raise a family, for seniors to afford the prescription drugs we need, for young people to afford college. She supports fully restoring a woman’s right to choose across our nation, and will stand up against the radical right-wing agenda embodied by Project 2025, which is a direct threat to the freedoms and civil liberties Americans hold dear. She will stand up for our allies and democracy at home and abroad. She will not abandon Ukraine or NATO. She will work to build an economy of opportunity, one where we tackle climate change by embracing new technologies and creating energy abundance, one where it’s easier to start a business, one where everyone has a fair shot to achieve their dreams.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square, and responded to that fact by whipping a mob into a frenzy and sitting back and doing nothing while they stormed the United States Capitol. You probably watched this attack on our nation on your television. I got to experience it firsthand as I hid in a secure room with my boss while the heart of American democracy was defiled. This was the climactic moment of a terrible presidency that divided our nation, that diminished our standing in the world, that packed our courts with theocrats who have used their power to undermine the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Four years ago, 81 million Americans voted to fire Trump. Today, he’s surrounding himself with anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts, anti-gay activists who coddle dictators like Assad and Putin, and fanatics who proudly spread divisive and dangerous lies.

Kamala Harris has spent her life working for a better America as a prosecutor, a Senator, and Vice President. She’s an inspiring American story.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life nursing grievances and caring only about himself. He embodies everything our parents told us not to be when we grow up.

Vote for Kamala Harris on or before November 5, and if you can, please contribute to her campaign.

Local Politics Matter, Too!

And while I have your attention, I feel compelled to mention that I’m running for re-election on the Democratic ticket for Alexandria City Council this November. Over the three years that I have been a member of the City Council, I have worked to address our city’s affordable housing crisis, to do our part in the fight against climate change, to improve public safety by supporting our first responders, to support our young people by increasing funding for our schools and our senior citizens on fixed incomes by reducing their property taxes. I’ve also led the Council in standing up for Alexandria’s values by defending our abortion clinics in the wake of Dobbs and supporting our schools as they stood up to Governor Youngkin’s attacks on trans students.

I’m proud of my record in Alexandria, and of our city’s role in keeping Virginia blue. If you’d like to contribute to help me, and my fellow Democratic nominees, win in November and turn out the vote for Kamala Harris and Time Kaine, you can do so here.

Thank you for reading my analysis of current polling in the 2024 Presidential race. This will be updated every Monday evening until the election. If you have friends who you think would be interested in receiving these updates, please share this with them! There is no cost to subscribe to these updates.

Share

The steady-state nature of the 2024 presidential campaign remains mostly unaltered in this week’s update. Once again, Harris has leads in states totaling 276 electoral votes compared to Trump’s 262 electoral votes. Yet again, Harris leads by around 3 points in the national popular vote. In the margins, however, there’s been some movement: Harris slipped by 1 point in Nevada and Wisconsin, and now those states are around as close as Pennsylvania. Within those rounded margins, every swing state has drifted a bit away from Harris in the last week, and Pennsylvania has now replaced North Carolina as the closest state in my polling averages.

For Democrats, this is not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to work hard. If you have the ability to get yourself to Pennsylvania to canvass, do so. If you have some money to spare, donate it to Harris’s campaign or to a competitive House race in Pennsylvania, where every Democrat who we can pull to the polls is another vote to save American democracy.

These slight shifts — and they are very slight — could just be statistical noise. However, they do seem to fit a pattern of Harris doing better when she’s in the spotlight and very visibly campaigning and slipping a bit when she’s not. Harris is great on the stump, does well in media interviews, and has a lot of charisma. Her campaign should do more to get her out in front of the public. More press, more events, and, sure, do that informercial in the swing states. Whatever it takes. Leave it all on the field.

Road to 270 Electoral Votes

Kamala Harris holds leads in slightly more than enough states to win if the election were held today based on my polling averages. The methodology used to calculate these averages is described towards the end of this post.

🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 2 points in Michigan (15 electoral votes).

🔵 Harris appears to lead by around 1 point in Nevada (6 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). That is a shift of 1 point away from Harris in Nevada and Wisconsin in the last week.

🔴 Trump appears to lead by around 1 point in Arizona (11 electoral votes), Georgia (16 electoral votes), and North Carolina (16 electoral votes).

In the national popular vote, Harris appears to lead by around 3 points.

The present tipping point state is Pennsylvania, and the current differential between the tipping point margin and the national popular vote is 2.2 points, a decrease of 0.3 point since last week.

Polling in the Past Week

After a great week in national polling two weeks ago, the numbers for Harris were slightly tighter last week.

High quality polls from Susquehanna and Leger (for the New York Post) gave Harris decent leads of 5 and 4 points, respectively. Morning Consult also reported a 5 point lead for Harris.

A YouGov poll for The Economist gave Harris a 3 point lead, while another of their polls, this time for Yahoo! News, came out a tie, as did a poll by RMG Research.

Data for Progress and TIPP Insights both showed Harris leading by 3 points. A Marist College survey gave Harris a 2 point lead, as did a poll by Redfield & Wilton. And Emerson came in with a 1 point lead for Harris.

The chart below shows each week of national polling since Harris entered the race, weighted by pollster quality.

🔵 Harris held a lead of 2.6 points in a weighted average of all national polls completed in the week of September 29, compared to 3.7 points the week before, and 3.6 points during the week of September 15.

There wasn’t nearly as much state-level polling released last week as the week before. Perhaps pollsters were holding off to poll after the Vice Presidential debate? In any case, the main theme in the state by state polling released last week was very slight movement — except in the case of Nevada, which shifted pretty sharply from a Harris lead in the polls released two weeks ago to a tie last week.

In Wisconsin, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 1.9 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 1 point in surveys released the week before.

In Michigan, four new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 1.1 points in the weighted average of them, the same margin as in surveys released the week before.

In Pennsylvania, five new polls were released last week, and 🔵 Harris led by 0.7 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.4 points in surveys released the week before.

In Nevada, four new polls were released last week, and the results were 🟣 tied between Harris and Trump in the weighted average, compared to a 2.7 point Harris lead in surveys released the week before.

In Georgia, two new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 0.6 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.4 points in surveys released the week before.

In North Carolina, seven new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 1.3 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.6 points in surveys released the week before.

In Arizona, four new polls were released last week, and 🔴 Trump led by 2.1 points in the weighted average of them, compared to 0.5 points in surveys released the week before.

Comparison to Other Aggregators

Below is a table that compares my current projected margin in each of the seven swing states with that of other polling aggregators. Some of these websites also publish forecasts of the eventual November 5 results, but what I am listing here are their estimated margins of where the polls stand in each state today

As you can see, all the aggregators now agree on which candidate is ahead in each state. All aggregators also show movement to Trump across every state and the national popular vote since last week. Enough to make Pennsylvania the closest state, but not enough to put Trump ahead in the Electoral College in any aggregator’s polling average.

Methodology

The polling numbers discussed above are weighted, adjusted, and blended averages based on pretty much every poll released since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee in late July.

To produce these averages I take the following steps:

1. I collect polls from Twitter, aggregators and news websites. In cases when pollsters release more than one survey at the same time, I preference the head to head Harris versus Trump polls over the broader field polls (because I believe that polling greatly overstates third party vote shares) and likely voter surveys over registered voter surveys. I do not include “all adult” polls.

2. I weight the polls by pollster quality and time since completion. For pollster quality, I used the grades from FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin translated into a 0.0 to 1.0 value. Pollsters with no such ranking are still included, but with a fairly low weight. Likely voter surveys are given 10% more weight than a registered voter survey from the same pollster would be. The weight given to a poll falls every seven days after its completion, to preference newer data over older data, and is zeroed out six weeks after the poll came out of the field. I do not adjust the weight given to a survey based on sample size.

3. I then adjust those weighted averages to split the undecideds and set the projected third party share of the vote at around 2 percent. This completes the process for creating my estimated national popular vote, but to create a final estimated vote in each state, there’s one more step.

4. I then take the margin in my estimated national popular vote, and combine it with a weighted average of the differential between each swing state/district’s 2016 and 2020 results and the national 2016 and 2020 results. This gives me an estimate of what the margin in each swing state/district would be based just on historical patterns and my estimated national popular vote margin. I then combine these regressions with the weighted, adjusted average for each state/district at a 20% to 80% weight, giving me a blended number and a final estimated vote in each swing state/district. In cases where there a very few, or only very old, polls in a specific state or district, I increase the weight of regression based on national polling.

While others might quibble with one part or another of this methodology, I’m comfortable with it. It’s my best attempt to take the data available and use it to create a fair estimate of the present state of the presidential campaign without my partisan preferences influencing my analysis.

If you have a significant problem with any of the steps above, please just accept that I’m not going to change my process at this point. If you want to do your own analysis, you almost certainly have Microsoft Excel or Apple Numbers (which is what I use) on your computer. Take a crack at it — math is fun!

Kamala Harris for President

While the point of these averages is to try to create an estimate of where the presidential race now stands in a data-based and impartial manner, I am not impartial. I don’t think any of us should be.

Kamala Harris is the right choice for President of the United States. She has been an excellent Vice President. She has cast tie breaking votes on landmark legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. She is running on a platform built around addressing real challenges facing the American people. She has plans to address prices and the cost of living. She has plans to address our nation’s critical housing shortage. She has plans to make it easier for new parents to afford the raise a family, for seniors to afford the prescription drugs we need, for young people to afford college. She supports fully restoring a woman’s right to choose across our nation, and will stand up against the radical right-wing agenda embodied by Project 2025, which is a direct threat to the freedoms and civil liberties Americans hold dear. She will stand up for our allies and democracy at home and abroad. She will not abandon Ukraine or NATO. She will work to build an economy of opportunity, one where we tackle climate change by embracing new technologies and creating energy abundance, one where it’s easier to start a business, one where everyone has a fair shot to achieve their dreams.

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square, and responded to that fact by whipping a mob into a frenzy and sitting back and doing nothing while they stormed the United States Capitol. You probably watched this attack on our nation on your television. I got to experience it firsthand as I hid in a secure room with my boss while the heart of American democracy was defiled. This was the climactic moment of a terrible presidency that divided our nation, that diminished our standing in the world, that packed our courts with theocrats who have used their power to undermine the rights of women, people of color, and LGBTQ people. Four years ago, 81 million Americans voted to fire Trump. Today, he’s surrounding himself with anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts, anti-gay activists who coddle dictators like Assad and Putin, and fanatics who proudly spread divisive and dangerous lies.

Kamala Harris has spent her life working for a better America as a prosecutor, a Senator, and Vice President. She’s an inspiring American story.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life nursing grievances and caring only about himself. He embodies everything our parents told us not to be when we grow up.

Vote for Kamala Harris on or before November 5, and if you can, please contribute to her campaign.

Local Politics Matter, Too!

And while I have your attention, I feel compelled to mention that I’m running for re-election on the Democratic ticket for Alexandria City Council this November. Over the three years that I have been a member of the City Council, I have worked to address our city’s affordable housing crisis, to do our part in the fight against climate change, to improve public safety by supporting our first responders, to support our young people by increasing funding for our schools and our senior citizens on fixed incomes by reducing their property taxes. I’ve also led the Council in standing up for Alexandria’s values by defending our abortion clinics in the wake of Dobbs and supporting our schools as they stood up to Governor Youngkin’s attacks on trans students.

I’m proud of my record in Alexandria, and of our city’s role in keeping Virginia blue. If you’d like to contribute to help me, and my fellow Democratic nominees, win in November and turn out the vote for Kamala Harris and Time Kaine, you can do so here.