2024 US Presidential Election

[sundin13]

JWeinCom said:

Torillian said:

Important to remember, though that it's all just about the distribution. Democrats have been losing ground in places like NY and CA where republicans are so far off they can't possibly have a shot, so if you maintain the same popular vote lead but more of that is distributed in the correct states you're set. 's why you're best off keeping track of the meaningful individual state polling rather than the overall number though that can give you current trends. 

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/ There's a "path to 270" visual on this page that kinda shows you the true state of thing. 

It's hard to know the distribution. There's not a ton of reliable polling data in places like Oregon, California, New Jersey, or Mississippi because we already know who is going to win there, and frankly, nobody cares if Trump is going to win Kansas by 20 or 25. 

Whether we extrapolate from the popular vote or look at the swing state data, we get to the same thing, that Harris is winning by a very very small margin. Of course, a win is a win, but due to the limitations of polls, it's hard to predict anything with confidence. 

While I agree that Harris is not leading by much, the conventional wisdom of "She may need to win nationally by 2-3 points to win the election" may be a bit outdated. Per Nate Silver, polling this cycle indicates that the electoral advantage may have significantly shrunk (obviously that is contingent on poll accuracy):