With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, former President Donald Trump is polling better than he ever has nationally, raising the very real prospect that he could win the national popular vote, and in the process, doom the electoral chances of Vice President Kamala Harris.
As of Friday, Trump and Harris are tied in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. Harris had consistently led the former president since Aug. 5, expanding her lead to as much as two points, as recently as Oct. 8.
The final New York Times/Siena poll, released Friday, found Trump and Harris tied at 48% each. A recent Wall Street Journal poll shows Trump leading 49% to 46%, and a CNBC poll has Trump leading 48% to 46%. Harris did lead in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll 48% to 45%, but the race is a dead heat nationally, just as it is in the swing state polls.
Now, the national polls and the national popular vote are meaningless when it comes to who gets elected to the presidency. But the state of the national polls can tell us a thing or two about the Electoral College and the race to 270 electoral votes. And it boils down to this: Harris is in serious trouble if the national polls are this tight.
For the last two election cycles, the Electoral College has been biased toward Republicans. Both Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden won the national popular vote, but Clinton only won it by two points in her losing 2016 campaign. Biden, on the other hand, won the popular vote by four and a half points, but barely scraped by in the Electoral College by roughly 40,000 combined votes in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. If he had lost all three states, he would have failed to get to 270 electoral votes, but would have still easily carried the popular vote.
Now, there is significant evidence that suggests the Electoral College’s Republican bias will not be as pronounced as it was four years ago, but if Harris hopes to win the “Rust Belt” states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, she likely must win the national popular vote by at least two points.
Here’s why: Trump’s national strength is partly explained by the fact that he is doing better in the safely Democratic states of New York and California and the safely Republican states of Texas, Florida, and Ohio. Essentially, these states which Trump is already definitively going to lose or win are evening out the Electoral College bias.
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But, swings in voter behavior do not happen in a vacuum. If Trump has improved his margins in safe states by a wide margin, it is unlikely that such a swing, even if comparatively smaller, will not occur in the key swing states as well. Furthermore, it is worth noting that national polls have tended to be closer to the mark in the Trump era, while swing state polls have grossly underestimated his strength.
In short, if Harris loses or barely wins the national popular vote, the odds that she is able to prevail in the Electoral College are exceedingly slim. She’d better hope that, unlike the last two presidential elections, the polls are overestimating Trump’s strength among the electorate.