Last update: 10 September 2024
The 2024 US presidential election polling and forecasts of who will win the electoral college show a tight race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
This page provides an overview of the 2024 presidential race between Harris and Trump, summarizing insights from forecasters, U.S. experts, and news outlets in charts and analysis.
The first chart below tracks their electoral vote count based on current polls, Cook Political Report forecasts, Fox News power rankings, ABC’s 538 model, JHK Forecasts, and the Financial Times electoral votes estimate.
The presidential election isn’t a popularity contest, and what state-level polling shows
The election in November is an indirect election, where voters cast ballots for a slate of Electoral College members. These electors then directly choose the president and vice president. To win the presidency, a candidate needs at least 270 out of the 538 available electoral votes.
In 2016, Donald Trump secured victory in the Electoral College despite Hillary Clinton receiving about 2.9 million more votes nationwide. While Clinton had a 2.1% lead in the popular vote, Trump won 30 states, giving him 306 pledged electors out of 538. So winning the popular vote is not enough. But tracking the trend in support for a candidate helps take the political temperature.
To assess the state of the race toward 270 electoral votes it is imperative to analyze who is more likely to win in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, or Arizona. These states are not only so-called swing states, meaning they swing back and forth between Republican and Democratic majorities but the tipping point state that is going to provide the 270th electoral vote is also most likely to come out of this group of states.
The states that (don’t) matter
The public debate too often focuses on U.S.-wide national polls, despite the election being decided in just a handful of states. In fact, most states have been voting the same way, either for the Republican or the Democratic candidate since the year 2000 or even much longer in some cases. Here’s a map that shows the solid red or blue states, and they are expected to support the respective candidate again.
Map of states that have voted for the same party since the year 2000
The first row in the chart on the top of this page shows the Electoral College estimate based on polling averages in all states and sums up the electoral votes of the respective state for each candidate depending on how likely it is the candidate would win this state if the election were held today.
States with a margin of less than 5% are counted as Toss-ups, those with a margin under 10% as Leaning, under 15% as Likely, and 15% or more as Safe. Remember, polls are a snapshot of public opinion at the time they are conducted and may have limited predictive value until the election date approaches.
The Electoral College forecasts by Fox News, Cook Political Report, and ABC’s 538 model are informed by polls but also other data or expert assessments of the political landscape. A well-calibrated model uses information from the national popular vote polling trends, as well as state-level polling and factors such as the incumbency status of the candidates or economic indicators that have statistically proven to be informative of who tends to end up in the White House.
2024 US presidential election polling and forecasts of who will win the Electoral College
This page is going to be updated with more charts, polling analysis, and regular updates of the Electoral College forecasts. More politics and data analysis is going to come on the corneliushirsch.com – blog.
About the U.S. presidential election
The 2024 United States presidential election, the 60th in the nation’s history, is scheduled for Tuesday, November 5, 2024. On that day, voters across the country, including those in the District of Columbia, will select electors for the U.S. Electoral College. These electors will then vote to determine the next president and vice president, who will serve a four-year term.