Why is Donald Trump ahead of our election predictions?
For For the first time since August, Donald Trump is ahead of Kamala Harris The EconomistStatistical model of the US presidential election. Our latest projections show Trump has a 54% chance of returning to the White House, up six percentage points over the past week. Although the race is still a coin toss, it is now tilted slightly in Trump’s direction.
The shift in our model reflects the continued narrowing of Ms. Harris’ lead in national polls over the past month. Shortly after she was named the presumptive Democratic nominee in July, a large group of respondents who had previously said they were undecided or supportive of third-party candidates began backing her, increasing her national vote share from 46% to 49%. %. Many of these voters may have been disillusioned Democrats.
Now, Trump appears to be benefiting from a similar partisan boost, as undecided, Republican-leaning voters “flip back” to their party’s nominee. While support for Ms. Harris has remained flat for two months, Trump’s support has risen from a low of 45% in August to 47% now. This reduced the national vote deficit from 3.7 percentage points to just 1.6 points.
Our forecast still gives the vice president a 74% chance of winning the popular vote. However, the reason Trump is ahead is his advantage in the Electoral College. State-specific polls published last week confirm that Trump’s position has strengthened slightly in reasonably battleground states, just as it has done nationwide (see chart below). The data does not support the claim by some Democrats that Republican-aligned companies are “flooding” polling averages with pro-Trump results: The former president has also gained ground in polls conducted by pollsters that tend to publish good numbers for Democrats.
As was the case in 2016 and 2020, the Democratic candidate performed worse in swing state polls than in national polls. The candidates are roughly tied in Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and Trump leads by about 2 percentage points in Arizona and Georgia. As a result, our model now estimates that Ms. Harris needs to win the national popular vote by at least 2.5 percentage points to be favored in the Electoral College, up from 1.8 points in August.
Our model’s predicted results in each state have changed only slightly. For example, Trump’s average expected share of the vote in Pennsylvania (excluding third parties) rose by 0.5 percentage points over the past week — a fraction of the 2.5 points Democrats have gained in the state since the day Joe Biden exited the state. Racing to the top for Ms. Harris. – Watermark September 19th. However, since the race is nearly tied, small shifts in the polls can have a large impact on the estimated odds of victory.
With only two weeks left in the campaign, there is little time left for the polling averages to move significantly. This does not guarantee that the elections will be close. It would only take a small polling error, within the range of historical variation, for either candidate to sweep the swing states and achieve a decisive victory. In fact, our model finds that there is about a 50/50 chance that one of the two candidates will receive at least 306 electoral votes — the number that Mr. Biden won in 2020, and which Mr. Trump won in 2016. ■
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