Presidential Race Goes Down to the Wire

After a summer and early fall of the unexpected and unprecedented, we end this election in a similar place to where we’ve been for the last eight years: with former President Donald Trump once again defining the contours of a presidential election.

Since 2017, elections have been about a lot of different issues. In 2018, health care, namely a backlash to Republican attempts to roll back the Affordable Care Act, was a key factor in Democrats’ success in that midterm election. In 2020, COVID-19 was a major factor in Trump’s defeat. And, in 2022, the issue of abortion helped Democrats stave off what should have been a terrible election for their party.

Yet, in every one of those elections, the shadow of Trump and Trumpism were also important factors in Democrats’ political success — especially in key purple and battleground states.

This is why Vice President Kamala Harris is closing out her campaign not with an embrace of the Biden era, but a repudiation of the Trump era. In her remarks on the Ellipse, she recounted Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6 as one of the many examples of how he is “unstable” and “out for unchecked power.”  

The Trump campaign’s official closing message centers on Harris’ record as vice president, arguing that he can fix things like the economy and border security that she “broke.” A recent campaign ad from the campaign closes with the line, “We can't afford four more years of Kamala.”

That’s a pretty standard message for a challenger. It should also be a winning message at a time when two-thirds of voters see the country on the wrong track and give Trump a significant advantage over Harris on issues like the economy and inflation.

Yet, Trump himself isn’t exactly a disciplined messenger. His event at Madison Square Garden last weekend, meant to drive home that closing argument of “fixing things,” turned into a multi-day media focus on a comedian at that event who described Puerto Rico as “floating garbage.”

Trump’s refusal to trim his MAGA sails and his instinct to lean into controversy has won him a solid and unwavering base of support. But it has also given him a hard ceiling. In his two previous elections, Trump has been unable to get more than 48-49% of the vote in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin or Arizona. This year, however, he’s counting on a new-found well of support among voters of color and younger men to help him break through that ceiling.

Harris is counting on limiting her losses among those traditionally Democratic voters of color, especially Black voters, while also getting record levels of support from white, college-educated voters and stronger turnout from women.

Democrats up and down the ticket are counting on the abortion issue to help drive women and these white college-educated voters to the polls. According to data provided to The Cook Political Report by AdImpact, 44% of all ads run by Democratic candidates for the House and Senate this month focused on abortion.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t take a massive “realignment” of voters to impact the outcome of this election. Small shifts to Trump among traditionally Democratic groups (Latino or Black voters) or shifts to Harris among traditionally Republican voters (college-educated whites) can be the difference between winning and losing.

Harris’ strength with white college-educated voters is the reason we are moving the electoral vote in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District from Lean Democrat to Likely Democrat. This Omaha-based district has the highest percentage of white voters with degrees of any of the battleground states. According to the data vending firm Catalist, 43% of the electorate of the 2nd District fits this demographic profile. Joe Biden won those voters by four points in 2020, but it’s likely that Harris will win them by an even larger amount this year. We don’t have a lot of public polling in this Electoral College battleground, but the latest New York Times/Siena College poll showed Harris up 12 points here, a six-point improvement over Biden’s 2020 showing. Private polling we’ve seen in the district finds Harris with a smaller, but still formidable lead.

This move does not impact the overall Electoral College math. Harris heads into Election Day with 226 electoral votes in Likely or Solid Democrat and Trump with 219 in Likely or Solid Republican. Seven states and their 93 electoral votes are too close to call, with neither candidate having a lead larger than one or two points in any state.

Polling averages suggest that Trump has a narrow lead in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. If he won all three, that would add up to 260 electoral votes, ten votes shy of an Electoral College victory. Harris has a tiny lead in Michigan and Wisconsin. If she wins both, she’ll still be 19 votes shy of 270. Nevada and Pennsylvania are currently tied in the 538 average. In that scenario, neither candidate could win without Pennsylvania.

But that dramatic scenario isn’t one that we’ve seen in the last two cycles. Instead, almost all of the battleground states have ultimately broken to one candidate. In 2016, Trump carried all but Nevada. In 2020, Biden carried all but North Carolina. Moreover, analyst Ron Brownstein has noted that in every presidential election but one since 1980, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have voted for the same candidate.

In other words, it’s very possible that this race will not not end up that close in the Electoral College, even if the number of votes separating the winner from the loser in those states is very small.

So, how soon can we or should we expect to know the winner?

In 2020, as many remember, we didn’t learn the winner of the election until Saturday when AP and every major network called Pennsylvania for Biden. Of course, that year was unique because the pandemic increased the number of voters who cast their ballots by mail, with many states and localities unable to manage this inflow.

But when you look back at 2016, AP called Wisconsin, which put Trump over the 270 threshold, at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

It’s likely that this year will look more similar to 2016 than 2020.