MrDollarBills wrote:Pointgod wrote:MrDollarBills wrote:
If Harris takes PA and NC, wouldn't that basically be the end right there?
I don't have confidence in her flipping NC but I never thought Biden would take PA and GA either.
Of the 7 battleground states Harris just needs to win Penn, Wisconsin, Michigan and anyone of Nevada, Georgia or Arizona and there’s no path for Trump. Trump meanwhile has to at least win 5/7 depending on the combination and the fact the NC means he’s playing defence instead of expanding his map. Remember he’s already starting down in all the swing states Biden won.
Nice. Very nice.
http://vote.gov
Here's the current breakdown:
https://www.270towin.com/https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/Right now, the safe-ish map for both candidates has Kamala winning 226-219, with 93 toss-ups. She has to get to 270, which is 44 votes (if it's a tie, it's essentially number of states won, meaning Trump wins, meaning Kamala needs at least 270)
538 actually no longer has Wisconsin and Michigan as toss-ups, they have them both as "lean D" (meaning Kamala has over a 60% chance of winning). For reference, Florida is currently in the "lean R" category for them. So not to count chickens before they hatch, but if she gets both of them (25 votes), that brings her up to 251, needing 19
PA has exactly 19, so as long as no other states flip, she can win with just WI, MI, and PA. However, if she loses PA, she must win one of NC or GA, as NV and AZ are both only 17 votes combined, which would leave her with only 268 votes. Furthermore, if she loses PA but wins one of NC or GA, she has to win one more of NV, AZ, GA, or NC, as both those two states are 16 votes each, bringing her to only 267
Nate Silver's polling aggregates have her up by 2.4% in MI and 1.8% in WI, so kind of concurring not safe D states, but pretty good leads there. He has her down in GA by 1%, tied in NC, and up in PA by 1.3%. Furthermore, 538 has her at 58% odds of winning PA, meaning almost out of toss-up range and into "lean D" range (was in "lean D" for a day earlier this week)
In short: the easiest path for Kamala is through the Rust Belt. She not only has moderate leads in all 3 states, but even if she loses the other 4, she should have just enough to win. She can also win through NC or GA, but those are both less likely than PA at this point, and even if she does get them, she would still need one other toss-up to go her way. Basic math (using 538's probabilities), she has a 22% chance of winning the 3 rust belt states (this is like draft lottery odds, individually it doesn't look great, but it is technically the best odds)
Trump has really only 1 path, he needs to win GA, NC, and PA. Even if he flips MI (15 votes), if he loses one of those 3 states in the process, it'll be a net loss for him. That's why if you look at the data, he's spending all his time and resources in those 3 states and more or less letting the rest of the swing states up for grabs.
I've been bullish on her odds for that reason, she needs less to go her way than he does. He needs essentially to be perfect. It still could be a 2016 situation where everything went right for him and he won by really narrow margins in the few states he needed to, but that's unlikely.
