By Aaron Blake, The Washington Post (c) 2024
It’s almost Election Day, and if you think you know what’s about to happen, you’re either deluded or much smarter than I am.
The Washington Post’s polling averages show that all seven swing states are separated by two points or less. That means if things move only two points from where we think they stand, you could see a swing-state sweep for either candidate and a pretty decisive election – at least, in the electoral college.
Given all that uncertainty, I thought it worth walking through the most likely scenarios, as things appear to stand now, and how we might arrive at a victory for either candidate.
Here are seven of them, in rough order of plausibility – but with just about all of them being plausible.
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1. A Harris squeaker – most likely via the ‘blue wall’
This would seem the most likely scenario, according to The Washington Post’s polling averages. That doesn’t mean it’s likely, period – just more likely than the others.
The reason is that Harris currently holds a slight lead in four of seven swing states – Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – which puts her on course for 276 electoral votes (with 270 required).
And all she really needs are three: the Northern “blue wall” states. Throw in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District – where she leads by around 10 points – and Harris gets to exactly 270.
(Nebraska is one of two states to award electoral votes by district, along with Maine.)
If Harris does secure the presidency relatively narrowly via the blue wall, a few factors could tell the tale.
A big one, somewhat paradoxically, could be White and older voters. These demographics usually favor Republicans, but Democrats have fared relatively well with them, historically speaking, even as they’ve seen some potential erosion with other key groups, like Black, Hispanic and young voters. These blue-wall states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – are older and whiter than the other swing states.
Democrats have also tended to do better with White voters without college degrees – a major Trump base – in these states.
Another key factor that separates these swing states from the others: Prior to the Trump era, they were relatively blue. Barack Obama didn’t win any of them by fewer than five points in either 2008 or 2012. Democrats will hope Harris can echo that kind of appeal.
The fourth state in which Harris currently has a narrow lead – Nevada – was also more reliably blue before the Trump era.
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2. A Trump squeaker – possibly through the East
Trump’s best path to victory is a bit more difficult to suss out. But one that his campaign appeared to put a lot of stock in in recent months also involves three states, focusing on the East: Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
That appears more plausible than it was before, as polling in Pennsylvania has tightened to a less than one-point lead for Harris, Trump has long held a slight lead in Georgia, and polls of North Carolina suggest he might be expanding his slight lead there.
If Trump can execute this path, his gains with Black voters could play a significant role. Georgia and North Carolina have by far the largest Black populations among the swing states, and the Pennsylvania electorate is nearly 10 percent Black, too.
Trump has questioned Harris’s Black identity – falsely claiming she only recently embraced it – and he and his allies have suggested his experience with being prosecuted could expand his appeal among Black men who feel unjustly targeted by the justice system. Democrats have also worried that Black men, in particular, are more reluctant to vote for a woman for president, with Obama recently admonishing his fellow Black men in pretty strong terms.
More than anything, though, this would be about Trump’s winning traditionally red states (Georgia and North Carolina) while seeing his huge investment in the most important swing state (Pennsylvania) pay off.
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3. Trump rides the Sun Belt
The other most logical Trump path runs mostly through the Southern half of the country, but with a necessary Northern state thrown in.
Trump has seen his best polling in the Sun Belt states, especially Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina – the three states where he leads in The Post’s averages. Nevada, with its limited public polling, is a wild card.
The downside with this path is that it requires Trump to win more states. Even if Trump carried all four of those states, he’d have to pick off one of the Northern states, too.
If Trump did better across the Sun Belt, a big reason could be that their electorates tend to be more diverse. The four states mentioned are all more diverse than their Northern neighbors, and as mentioned, polls show Trump making real gains with Black and Hispanic voters.
Issues that loom large in this region include housing costs, which have risen more there than in Northern states. Illegal immigration could play a significant role if Trump can flip Arizona and Nevada red, given those states’ proximity to the border and the higher percentages of undocumented immigrants who live there.
The three states in which Trump leads are also ones that up until recently were pretty reliably Republican. Before 2020, Arizona and Georgia hadn’t gone blue since the 1990s. North Carolina has gone blue just once since the 1970s (in 2008).
From there, the question would become what Northern state Trump could add. Wisconsin was his closest loss in 2020 (0.6 points), but the tightening polls in Pennsylvania suggest he’s closest there.
4. A Harris rout
It’s pretty plausible that Harris runs the table – just by virtue of how close all the swing states are and her national polling lead (currently at two points).
If she overperforms the polls across the country by about two points, she could sweep all seven swing states. And if the polls are off by as much as they were in 2012 (when they undersold Obama’s win), she wins at least five of the seven swing states and around 300 electoral votes.
If Harris pulled it off, we’d be talking a lot about how women turned up big for her – not just because she would be the first female president, but also because of abortion rights. That proved a potent issue in the 2022 midterms after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and Democrats turned in one of the best performances in recent history for an incumbent president’s party. (That party almost always loses ground in midterms.)
More specifically, we could be talking about how Trump lost ground among White women, where polling shows he’s currently running significantly behind his previous margins from both 2016 and 2020.
We could also be talking a lot about Trump’s and the Republicans’ extensive late focus on provocations, stunts and culture-war issues like transgender rights – which don’t seem to have worked in the past – rather than bread-and-butter issues like the economy.
A final key factor could be that Democrats were just more motivated to vote – not necessarily because they love Harris, but because they fear Trump. Polling has shown Harris supporters are more likely to be “angry” and “upset” if the other candidate wins.
If Harris does win in a rout, the question might be how close she comes to winning in her “reach” states like Florida and Texas. But those would almost undoubtedly be the cherry on top for her rather than decisive for the electoral-college math.
5. A Trump rout
As any political handicapper will tell you – and as any panicky Democrat will be well aware – the polls underestimated Trump in both 2016 and 2020. What if they did so again?
Lucky for us, The Post’s polling averages can tell you exactly that. If the polls in each state are off as much as they were in 2016, Trump wins every swing state except Nevada. If they’re off as they were in 2020, Trump carries all seven.
In both cases, the electoral-college margin would look a lot like it did in 2016, when Trump won 306 electoral votes. But Trump would probably marry that with a popular-vote victory this time – unlike his two-point loss eight years ago.
As for how it could happen?
It would almost undoubtedly mean that Trump’s sizable polling gains among Black and Hispanic voters – especially men – are realized on Election Day. That would mean getting into the mid-to-high teens with Black voters and into the 40s with Hispanic voters. Perhaps other groups would shift toward Trump as voters’ reluctance to vote for a woman for president would show up in ways it hasn’t in polls.
Such a rout would probably mean a harsher verdict for the economy under the Biden administration than polling currently suggests. It could also cast a spotlight on the role of transgender rights.
Also likely playing a role would be the fact that Trump appears to be more popular than he was in either the 2016 or the 2020 campaign, when only around 4 in 10 Americans liked him.
Recent polls show his average favorable rating above 43 percent, and retrospective approval of his presidency is higher still. A Washington Post-Schar School poll last week showed 51 percent of voters across the seven swing states approved of his presidency. That’s higher than it ever was when he was in office, except in the very earliest days.
6. A mish-mash
The paths above and the rout scenarios all ignore the real possibility that we see something unexpected that doesn’t, on its surface, make a whole lot of sense.
Maybe the Northern states and Sun Belt states are split, for a variety of reasons.
Perhaps Harris loses a Northern state but makes up for it with Nevada and North Carolina – a state Trump has won twice but has a fast-changing population and where Republicans are worried about low turnout in the Trump-friendly areas most affected by Hurricane Helene.
Perhaps Trump wins Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia.
All these states are close enough that they could swing either way. In every election, we see states surprise us, as the polling errors demonstrate. Clinton didn’t pay Wisconsin much mind in 2016, after all, right before she lost it.
7. A tie!
It’s unlikely but still theoretically possible that we have a 269-269 tie in the electoral college.
The most likely scenario for that is Harris winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but losing the rest and Nebraska’s 2nd district (where she holds a wide lead in polling but we don’t have many polls).
Assuming she does win as expected in Nebraska’s 2nd, the most likely scenario is that Trump wins Pennsylvania, Michigan and either North Carolina or Georgia – and no other swing state.
At that point, we’d have what’s known as a “contingent election,” in which the House would elect the president by casting one ballot for each state’s delegation.
Which party controls the most delegations would depend on the election results in the 2024 election. But right now, it appears significantly more likely to be Republican. Ties in some delegations and other factors could affect whatever results.
It might be the least likely outcome, but with pretty much anything on the table, it can’t be ruled out.