A Democratic win in Indiana. A Republican victory in New Mexico. And an election where Missouri was decided by less than 4,000 votes.
They’ve all happened in the last twenty years.
These results are little more than trivia questions today (the answers are 2008, 2004, and 2008 again). At the time, they raised eyebrows and changed our understanding of the electorate.
Surprises happen on election week. And when the national race looks this close, one unexpected flip can decide who wins the White House.
Harris still closer to 270 than Trump, but it’s anyone’s game
Vice President Harris still has the edge in this week’s forecast. It predicts that Harris will take home at least 241 electoral college votes to Trump’s 219.
Her advantage is no larger than it was in September, and as this column has mentioned, battleground states are usually – and mostly – won and lost together. The six toss-up states in this forecast are worth 78 votes, enough to give either candidate a victory on election night.
National polls show a tight race: a Quinnipiac survey has Harris and former President Trump tied at 48%-48% with likely voters, while Marist has the candidates at 50%-48%, well within the polls’ margins of sampling error.
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Neither poll shows Trump slipping with the national electorate. Other recent polls showed a point worth of erosion after the September presidential debate.
Battleground state polls have been sparse. (Hurricane Helene has devastated communities in Georgia and North Carolina, and Hurricane Milton will soon make landfall in Florida. This will affect the accuracy of polling in these areas.)
Overall, this race is still anyone’s game.
All eyes on an October surprise
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. JD Vance debated a week ago in New York City. Vance mostly broke through the character that Democrats had constructed for him, while Walz stumbled out of the gate.
A flash poll showed neither candidate winning the night. As always, wait for results from multiple polls conducted in the weeks after the debate to properly assess the polling impact.
That was the only scheduled event that could surprise voters this month. (Fox News Media has proposed a second Harris-Trump debate later in October.)
Of course, it’s the unexpected events in years past that have done more to reshape the race. And events in two categories have already resurfaced.
- Severe weather: Hurricane Sandy tore through the northeast in late October 2012. President Obama’s cooperation with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was a landmark moment. This year, Helene and Milton are testing the candidates. Trump made visits to Georgia and North Carolina last week, and Harris was in Asheville over the weekend with Governor Roy Cooper.
- Foreign policy: A video from Osama Bin Laden four days before the 2004 election refocused the race on 9/11, national security and America’s war on terrorism. Yesterday marked a year since Hamas’ terrorist attack in Israel and war rages between Ukraine and Russia; both are reminders of global instability during the Biden Administration.
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Polarization will limit the impact of these events on the horserace. But watch Harris and Trump’s support with independents over the coming weeks. Those voters made up 5% of the electorate in 2020, and they broke for President Biden by 15 points; recent polls put Harris in that ballpark. Trump likely needs to claw that back to win the race.
Two states that could surprise in November
There are nine “likely” races on the Power Rankings map. The two that would have the biggest impact on the race are Florida and Virginia.
Former President Trump improved his performance in Florida in the 2020 presidential election, bringing his margin up to about 372,000 votes.
That’s a win of 3.4 points, or his second-closest victory of the cycle. (The closest was North Carolina, a toss-up in the rankings, which he won by 1.3 points.)
Republicans have strong advantages. The state’s White working-class and senior voters lean towards Trump, while its large Hispanic population, particularly the Cuban and Venezuelan communities, has shifted right in recent years.
The GOP won big at every level in the midterms and enjoys a 1 million-plus voter registration advantage, and most tellingly, the Democratic Party is not making significant investments.
Democrats hope that a competitive Senate race, where incumbent Republican Rick Scott has personally spent more than $8 million, means the presidential election is closer than people think. Florida is also one of three competitive states with an abortion measure on the ballot.
It would take a blowout night for Harris to flip the Sunshine State. It would also be the first state after the battlegrounds to go blue.
Florida stays at Likely R in the rankings.
A win for Trump in Virginia would also be shocking, especially since Biden won this state by more than 10 points in 2020.
The state has a higher proportion of Black, suburban, and college-educated voters than the rest of the country, and all three groups help Democrats run up the margin. While Republicans talked about Virginia after the June presidential debate, the race has changed, and neither party is making big investments in the state today.
Some polls show a race that isn’t over for the GOP. A survey from Virginia Commonwealth University in September put Harris at 47% with registered voters and Trump at 37%. A poll from the Washington Post earlier in the month had Harris at 50% to Trump’s 42%.
Still, it would take a blowout in the other direction for the Old Dominion to reject Harris. Virginia remains a Likely D race.
Four weeks until election night
More than 1.5 million voters have cast their ballot as the countdown to election night continues. Early voting has now begun in:
The Harris ticket continues a media tour this week while Trump will rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The GOP has done surprisingly well there in recent years.
