There are just over two weeks left until November 5th. The elections in the United States will be decided by a very fair margin, to the point that the paradox may arise that Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and loses the White House if Donald Trump prevails in key states that give him the majority in the College. Electoral.
The electoral college is made up of 538 delegates. To win, one of the candidates has to receive at least 270 votes from the electoral college. The figure of 538 is not random and is equivalent to the number of members of the House of Representatives (435) plus the number of senators (100) plus three delegates for Washington DC, which does not have representatives in either chamber.
The delegates are distributed by state and the winning party in each territory takes the entire number of delegates assigned to that state, except in Maine (4) and Nebraska (3), where the system is proportional. With these two exceptions, it makes no difference whether you win a state by one ballot or by a million: if you win, you get all the electoral votes in that state, and the loser in that state gets nothing.
The polls, at the moment, present a very tight scenario, with a slight advantage for Kamala Harris. In the following graph you can see how they are doing based on the average of surveys published FiveThirtyEight, which adds different polls and gives different weight by date, sample size, methodology, transparency or bias of each polling house.
Harris is ahead with an advantage of just over two points over Trump, in a race in which Biden’s withdrawal has been decisive: Harris has been rising in the polls since she assumed the presidential race with respect to the still president although the margin has narrowed in the last week.
Donald Trump, for his part, distances himself from Kamala Harris in Arizona and does the same in Georgia and North Carolina, two disputed states.
Precisely in Arizona, the Republican has managed to turn around the polls and is ahead of Harris. In 2020, Joe Biden won this state with 49.4% of the votes and a margin of about 10,000 votes difference with Trump.
The following map shows the victory forecast for each candidate, according to the FiveThirtyEight modelwhich not only takes into account the polls but also the historical vote, economic and social data of each State to simulate the probabilities of winning for each candidate. According to this model, victory in the 2024 elections will be decided in the seven key states, currently undecided.
The other two battleground states where Trump appears ahead are Georgia and North Carolina. In 2020, Biden managed to win in Georgia with about 11,000 votes, a tight 49.5% compared to 49.2% for the Republican.
In North Carolina, despite the fact that Trump continues to lead, the possibility of changing color this November 5 has not been ruled out. In 2020, the Republican managed to win by about 75,000 votes.
The following table shows a summary of how the race is in the polls of the seven states where the battle is tightest and that will decide the 2024 elections in the United States.
Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina are three swing states. There is a possibility that Harris could win the White House without them, although it would be a very difficult scenario. For Trump, Georgia and North Carolina are more critical. For now, Pennsylvania continues to be seen as the place that will have the last word and in this state Harris continues to lead with a small difference.
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