How Harris or Trump wins in 2024

Map: The United States Electoral Map showing the voting power in an election. Small changes in the map have occurred since the 2020 election due to the results of the 2020 US Census. The changes are slightly positive for the Republicans, as Republican-leaning states received more population inflows than did Democratic-leaning states. For example, Republican leaning Texas gained two electoral votes while Democratic-leaning California and New York each lost one.

Will the system ever change?

The only way to change the Electoral College system would be by constitutional amendment, which would require two-thirds of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate) to vote in favour and for three-fourths of the US states to do likewise. This will simply not happen outside of some unprecedented political earthquake that is beyond the realm of the imaginable in the current environment, because one or the other party always benefits from the system.

Okay, it’s here to stay, but what are the implications of the Electoral College?

The implications of the Electoral College system are many, but most importantly:

1. It significantly tilts the odds toward a Republican victory
   
   The Electoral College system has persisted despite many efforts to change it over the years because one side of the two-party system always has an advantage from it. For the past several election cycles, because of demographic voting patterns across the many states, the advantage is enormously on the Republican side. Republicans perform best in the less populous, more rural states, which have a disproportionate number of electoral votes relative to population as noted above. Thus, Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by more than 2% and yet won the election. So, when we look at the polls, the Democrats generally need a clear and decisive lead in the polls nationwide to win the election.
   
   
2. Swing states are the only key battleground that really matters for the presidential election
   
   Because there are many states that are likely to swing heavily to one of the parties, the election is decided by a handful of what some call “purple” states (neither clearly red, Republican, or blue, Democratic). These states are the pivotal difference-makers for who will become president because they could swing either way. That’s why they are also popularly referred to as “swing” states. The closest of calls came in the 2000 US Election when the vote count was almost a dead tie in Florida1, the decisive state for victory. Also in 2016, it was less than 55,000 of the more than 10 million voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan that handed the election to Trump. That’s less than 0.5% of the vote in those two states combined and less than 0.045% of the 129 million who voted in the election nationwide. (Again, Donald Trump lost the nationwide popular vote by 2.1% to Hillary Clinton.)

*Two exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, where the three House seats in Nebraska and two house seats in Maine each get an elector according to who won that House seat, so a split is possible for these states. (This happened in 2020, for example, with one of Maine’s four electoral votes going for Republicans and one of Nebraska’s five votes going for the Democrats.

2024 US presidential election scenarios: 270 votes for the win

With the background stuff now out of the way, let’s get down to the nitty gritty and zero on the key factors for who will take the White House after the November 5 election.

Again, the US Presidential Election is all about the Electoral College math, which means that with 538 total electoral votes, a majority requires a minimum of 270 votes.  As at least 43 states are considered certain – or relatively safe bets – for either party, we’ll only consider the seven key swing states. 

There are seven swing states that will decide the winner

Let’s start with a map to illustrate the assumed wins for both Republicans and Democrats. It comes from the aptly named 270towin. Do follow the link to have a look at their interactive Electoral College map, which allows you to consider any number of scenarios and combinations. In the map below, we have coloured all the states that are not swing states in favour of one of the two parties that will likely win there. This leaves a total of only seven states that will decide the outcome of this election: they are Pennsylvania (PA: 19 votes), North Carolina (NC: 16), Georgia (GA: 16), Michigan (MI: 15), Arizona (AZ: 11), Wisconsin (WI: 10) and Nevada (NV: 6). Not including these states, in other words, and barring a massive swing in the polls, we can assume that Trump will get at least 219 Electoral Votes and Harris at least 226. If that is correct, victory for the Republicans must add up to 51 or more additional electoral votes for the Republicans and 44 or more votes for the Democrats.

Map: The seven likely swing states in the 2024 US Presidential Election colored beige. Assuming all other states are correctly anticipated to lean for Republicans (red) and Democrats (blue), Harris will need to harvest 44 electoral votes from these seven states or Trump will need to harvest 51 votes to win.

We can generally group these seven swing states into three categories:

• The Mid-West Trio: (Pennsylvania (PA), Michigan (MI), Wisconsin, (WI)):
  
  These are three states where the population is stagnant, aging and generally white – all three went for Trump by a very narrow margin in 2016 and switched to Biden in 2020 – the very definition of swing states. Kamala Harris, a Californian, likely chose Tim Walz, the governor of traditionally democratic Minnesota as her VP pick because he is also from the old mid-West and, as a former schoolteacher who only began his political career in his 40’s, is someone who can speak to mid-West voters.
  
  
• The growing southern states: Georgia (GA) and North Carolina (NC):
  
  Biden’s very narrow victory in Georgia was perhaps the largest shock in the 2020 election. After all, this state and its 16 electoral votes went for Trump in 2016 after he won the popular vote by more than 5% in 2016. North Carolina went to Trump in both of the last two elections, but the Republican majority has shrivelled sharply. The state is considered in play for 2024 as the state features a more dynamic economy with more young professionals moving to its urban centres – a population often viewed as predominantly Democratic.
  
  
• Arizona (AZ) and Nevada (NV) – the border issue and growing from California “refugees"
  
  Many companies and their professional office staff have picked up stakes and moved out of California in recent years, where high cost of living plagues professionals, and where the highest earners were given a huge tax hike by the Trump “Tax Cut and Jobs Act” of 2017, which limited state and local tax deductions from federal filings. Many of these movers have settled in the neighbouring states Arizona and Nevada. Nevada has voted quite clearly Democratic in the last few elections but is seen as a possible pickup for Republicans due to a weak economy there. Working class voters are suffering from the combination of high unemployment and high housing prices due to a tight housing market and high mortgage rates. For Arizona, the focus could be more intense on illegal immigration and the border than in other swing states as it shares a long border with Mexico. The Biden administration struggles to deal with the heavy inflow of illegal immigrants and it’s easy for some of the blame to rub off on Harris, who Biden tasked with dealing with the root causes of illegal migration. Polls suggest Trump is more credible on tough immigration policies, and he promises to “seal the border” and to kick off mass deportations if elected. And yet, Arizona is running a very weak Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake at the same time. However, she is seen as too “MAGA” (Make America Great Again) outside of the Trump-supporting base. So-called split tickets** do happen in the US election, but they are in the minority.
  
  
** A split ticket is when a voter votes different parties on the same ticket, for example, voting Republican for president but voting Democratic for the local House and/or Senate seat.

Graphic: the 2016-2020 shifts in voting in the seven swing states

The graphic below shows the shift in voting for the seven US swing states from 2016-2020. Keep in mind that the national shift in the popular vote was +2.4% in favor of the Democrats (Clinton won by 2.1% nationwide in 2016 and Biden by 4.5% in 2020) in an election that featured a modern record turnout at the polls. The states seeing more population and urban growth: Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina (but not Nevada), shifted more democratic than did most of the mid-West, with the exception of Michigan. Biden’s loudly pro-union stance may have added to the Michigan vote as there are still 300,000 auto workers in the state.

Arguably, Nevada is a tossup because of factors I mention, Arizona probably leaning Democrat with popular Democrat governor, growing suburban population. Georgia and North Carolina are possible tossups and the mid-west states are a bit of a mystery - polling has been exceptionally terrible in these states in the last two elections. 

Scenario 1: The minimal path for Trump: one of the Mid-west trio states is critical

Because Trump needs to pick up 51 electoral votes among the swing states, he likely has to assume he’ll take back Georgia and retain North Carolina (+32 electoral votes). That means he needs 19 more – and Nevada plus Arizona won’t get him there. This means Trump absolutely must pick up at least one “mid-West trio” state. Assuming he takes Georgia and North Carolina, Pennsylvania’s 19 votes (as the biggest of the Mid-west trio states) would send him just over the edge even without Nevada and Arizona or any of the other two mid-west trio.

There could be more obscure ways for Trump to win, of course, but there is no path to victory for Trump if he loses all three of the Mid-West Trio. Possibly complicating Trump’s path to victory, both Michigan and especially Pennsylvania have quite popular Democratic governors that will be actively campaigning for Harris/Walz. 

Map: The Minimal Trump scenario. Here we assume Trump loses both Arizona and Nevada, but retakes Georgia and Pennsylvania – the latter sending him just over the edge with the minimum 270 vote majority.

Scenario 2: Harris has more possible paths to victory but needs strong edge in the popular vote.

As noted above, because the Electoral College system favours Republicans, Harris will likely need to win the popular vote by at least 2% to have a path to victory. If she does get that margin, there are likely more plausible paths to victory. These include:

Simply retaining all three of the mid-West trio states giving her the win even if she loses the remaining four of the seven swing states. It wouldn’t be a very satisfying outcome of a razor-thin 270-268 victory margin, but a win is a win, and she would likely also be able to tout at least a 2-3% popular vote win across the nation in such an outcome as well.

Other paths to Harris victory would be: winning either Georgia or North Carolina plus Arizona (likely tilting Democratic) and either Pennsylvania or the other two of the mid-West Trio.

Of course, as we discuss in our article about the Congressional races in the 2024 election, any less-than-very strong victory for the Harris/Walz ticket is unlikely to avoid the Republicans re-taking the Senate, which would mean that most of the Harris agenda would be blocked until at least after the 2026 mid-term elections. 

Map: A plausible Harris path to victory is to simply retain the mid-west states as noted above, with the thinnest possible margin of victory. If she loses the large mid-West prize Pennsylvania, she will have to pick up two more states at minimum not including Nevada – perhaps Arizona and Georgia.

Scenarios 3 and 4: A Republican or Democratic landslide

As of late August, neither landslide scenario seems plausible in what looks like a close race according to the polls, but as a thought experiment, let’s consider what a landslide might look like for either candidate – also seen in the light of a landslide victory to either party can be a very critical outcome as it hands the president a strong mandate for policy-making.
A Republican landslide isn’t necessary for Trump to exercise near-maximum power, because the Republicans are almost certain to retake the Senate even if Harris wins, while the House would likely fall in the direction of a clear popular vote outcome for either party. But a stronger general result for the Republicans would probably lead to a larger majority in the Senate, which would help Trump avoid single senators holding up new legislative efforts like Joe Manchin, the retiring Independent from West Virgina, held up Biden’s huge fiscal packages and forced them to rework them before he would vote in favour. Electorally, it is very hard to see the electoral college outcome expanding beyond Trump taking all seven swing states (312-226 in Trump’s favour), but such a landslide outcome could maybe mean Trump also secures Minnesota and maybe New Hampshire into play. 
On the democratic side, a clean sweep of the swing states would mean a 319-219 victory for Harris. But pushing the general popular vote across the states just a few points in Harris’ favour relative to the 2020 results for Biden could suddenly see Florida (30 electoral votes) and even giant Texas (40 votes) into swinging for Harris. The swing states plus these two rich hauls would mean a 389-149 Harris landslide. With that kind of outcome, the Democrats would also likely take back the Senate, which looks very difficult to do otherwise.

Exotic scenarios: an Electoral College tie and/or a constitutional crisis?

Many have trotted out the idea ahead of this election that a very close result could see one of the sides refusing to accept the results of the election: the Republicans along the lines of Trump’s accusations of voting irregularities in 2020 and the situation that culminated with the storming of the Capitol by a rag-tag group on January 6, 2021, theoretically bent on stopping Vice President Pence from certifying the result of the election. On the Democratic side, on the other hand, an incredibly narrow result in the electoral vote could be accompanied by popular protests if Trump once again loses the popular vote, perhaps by 3% or more.
A tie scenario in the electoral votes (269-269) is theoretically possible in an unusual combination of swing state outcomes like Harris taking both Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, but losing all the mid-west states and Nevada. Otherwise, any exact tie outcome would require one of the 270-268 outcomes as shown above, plus perhaps the single Nebraska electoral vote that flipped for Biden in 2020 (Democratic majority of +6.5%) from Trump in 2016 (Republican majority of +2.24%) to revert to Trump. 
Of course, there are rules in the event of an electoral college tie, but a tie would go in Trump’s favour because it would be settled by a vote of the states, with each state delegation in the House of Representatives casting a single vote, with the three Democratic Washington DC House members not eligible to cast a vote. Inevitably, Trump would win such a vote as he would have won more states in this tie scenario (28 of 50). Controversially, such an outcome would almost certainly be accompanied by Trump having lost the national popular vote by 2- or more percent, casting once again a negative light on the injustice of the Electoral College system, especially when the final tie-breaking decision would give, for example, 39 million Californians the same voting power as 600,000 Wyoming-ites via the one-vote-per-state system.

Footnotes

^{1 Florida is a very populous state with over 22 million people and has a whopping 30 Electoral votes of the nationwide total of 538 due to its population rise, up from 29 electoral votes in 2020 and only 25 as recently as 2000. Florida used to be the ultimate swing state, often having a very even partisan balance. The 2000 election was the most consequential example of its swing status, when Florida faced the embarrassing spectacle of recounting tattered paper ballots and “hanging chads” (partially punched out holes in ballots) after the first vote count showed a very close result. After multiple recounts and a month of paralysis, the state was given to George W. Bush by a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court. Bush’s margin of victory in Florida, which gave him the 271-266-1 majority in the Electoral College and thus the presidency, was a mere 537 votes, a mere 0.009% margin of victory over Gore. Nationwide, Gore beat Bush by a bit over half a million votes.}