If you’re reading this, then the election is over. The votes have been counted, the states called, and the winner announced, for better or for worse. The point of these predictions is to serve as a reference point to show how people thought the election would turn out. As I’m writing this, the election looms closer and closer, and polls remain seemingly deadlocked. For example, polls in our own Pennsylvania, a key swing state that may very well determine the election, range from Donald Trump winning by large percentages to Kamala Harris winning. So then what can we analyze this election with? Well, not just polls alone. If we want to see who will win, we need to look at polls, results of previous elections, and the political environment of each state and the U.S. as a whole.
Paths to Victory:
Kamala Harris: For Harris to win, she must hold onto what has been termed the “blue wall,” which is made up of the three highly valuable swing states—Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. One of the primary reasons Trump won the election in 2016 is that he secured this traditionally democratic area. However, if Harris can hold on to these three states she can win narrowly. Alternatively, Harris can try to hold on to President Joe Biden’s 2020 gains of Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, as well as the newly-competitive state of North Carolina.
Donald Trump: Trump must disrupt the blue wall, either by taking Pennsylvania or the other states. Furthermore, if Trump wants to prevent a Harris victory he needs to make sure she does not win Georgia or North Carolina, as Kamala winning these states would make it even more difficult for Trump to win.
There are seven swing states that will determine the election this year, some of them more valuable than others to each campaign. In this article, I will try to accurately predict how each of them will vote.
As a reminder, the winner of an election is determined by how many electoral votes they get; each state has a certain number of electoral votes based on population. If a candidate gets the majority of votes in a state, they get that state’s electoral votes. There are 538 votes in total, and the candidate who gets 270 electoral votes wins.
Nevada: Six electoral votes. This state is by far the least important to both candidates. The polls are closely tied, but I believe Nevada will likely go to Harris. Why? Because a large amount of the polls showing Harris winning Nevada come from far more reputable pollsters. But perhaps more importantly, in the 2022 election midterms, Nevada elected a Democrat for the senate. Biden also won the state in 2020. For all these reasons, Nevada is Likely Harris.
Wisconsin: Ten electoral votes. Here the polls show Harris with a very narrow lead, but because Wisconsin has long been a stronghold for Democrats and it went for Biden in 2020, I believe Wisconsin is Likely Harris.
Arizona: 11 electoral votes. While polls can’t show us everything, most of them clearly show Harris behind in Arizona, with the poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight showing Trump with a 1.8-point lead in the state as of October 27, which Biden won in 2020. There are a variety of factors that could cause this, such as Harris doing worse with young men in Arizona than Biden did or perhaps just a general shift towards the Republicans. Because of Trump’s strong lead in the polls in Arizona, I believe that Arizona is Likely Trump.
Michigan: 15 Electoral votes. Polling from multiple poll aggregators show Harris with a clear lead. This state has traditionally voted Democratic as well. Thus, I believe Michigan is Likely Harris.
Georgia: 16 Electoral votes. Georgia is a newly Democratic-leaning state; it went for Biden in 2020 despite its long history of voting Republican throughout the rest of the 21st century. The polls show Trump with a lead in Georgia, but due to recent abortion laws passed in Georgia—that are disliked by the vast majority of its population, according to a poll conducted by the University of Georgia— Georgia might still be up for grabs as Harris has made abortion rights a major theme of her campaign. Due to this reason, I believe Georgia is Unclear but leaning towards Trump.
North Carolina: 16 electoral votes. Polling is very mixed in North Carolina. North Carolina has only recently become a swing state, but it did go to Trump in 2020. Due to the mixed polling and its Republican record, I believe North Carolina is Likely Trump.
Pennsylvania: 19 Electoral votes. This is by far the most important swing state. Pennsylvania has long been the decider of 21st-century elections, and it has only become more important this election. Polling here shows different results depending on what you look at, but I believe that Harris will win Pennsylvania due to it going for Biden last election. Also, according to Politico, Harris is spending more money there than Trump. I am calling Pennsylvania as Likely Harris.
If my predictions about every state are correct then Harris will narrowly win with 276 electoral votes to Trump’s 262. If I’m right, and Harris does win, Pennsylvania and other states will probably become more and more blue over time, and states like North Carolina will become even more of a tossup even if Harris does not win them. And perhaps most surprising of all, Texas will begin to slowly shift towards the Democrats as well, perhaps even becoming a swing state in 2028.
If I’m wrong and Trump wins, then expect to see newly competitive states like Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina move far out of the Democrats reach, this will most likely lead to Democrats having to focus on maintaining the blue wall next election rather than going for states in the South.
Finally, something to consider is that there could be a major error in the polling and the election could be a landslide for either candidate. In the 2020 election, polling heavily favored Biden, but it was a much closer election than originally thought. In the 2022 midterms, polling predicted the Republicans would do much better than they actually did—ultimately, polling can always be wrong.
Admittedly, by the time you’re reading this, the election will have passed. If you’re wondering: “Why read a prediction of an event that’s already long gone?” I believe it is valuable to understand why people thought the things they did because it helps us better understand new events, so even if I’m wrong, and Trump does win, then we’ll be able to see more clearly why people mistakenly thought Harris would win. Even if I am wrong in these predictions, I believe it’s important to look back after this election is over and consider our own biases to try to help us become more accurate in the future.
Post-election update, November 6: Looking back, I have found these results to be surprising to say the least. While I imagined many scenarios in which Trump won I did not imagine a scenario in which he did as well as he did this week. I was correct in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, going red but wrong in all my other predictions. So what did I miss? I think that I ignored polling too much while a lot of polling seemed to favor Trump. I thought that because polling was historically inaccurate it was not reliable enough for this election. If I had paid better attention I would have seen the red wave coming. It seems like I was wrong in the role the economy played in votes. I thought that America’s high levels of employment, and high economic growth right now would lead to higher support for the Democrats, but historically high inflation that has not fully faded away tilted the election in Trump’s favor. To summarize, I didn’t count on polling as much as I should have, and missed a few key factors that helped Trump secure victory.
