Is Donald Trump winning the 2024 election? OK, that’s a rhetorical question; the answer at this juncture is, of course, “we don’t know.” There’s a famous old saying that’s famous and old for a reason, that reason being that it’s accurate: “The only poll that counts in on Election Day.” But this is something of a key election, with a former president on one ticket and a cackling nitwit on the other; it’s amazing and somewhat baffling that the polling is as close as it is. Individual polls, though, mean little; for the last several cycles there have been just too many errors and mis-calls from pollsters. But one can glean some information from polling averages and trends, which RealClearPolitics compiles, and it’s fun to look at those averages and trends to get some kind of a feel for where things stand.
So, let’s do that.
The RealClearPolitics averages for the battleground states, as of this writing, in a one-on-one Trump/Harris matchup show:
- Arizona: Trump +1.4
- Nevada: Harris +1.1
- Wisconsin: Harris +0.8
- Michigan: Harris +0.7
- Pennsylvania: Tie
- North Carolina: Trump +0.6
- Georgia: Trump +1.5
Applying this to the electoral map and handing the Pennsylvania vote to Trump – recent polls in PA are trending Trumpward – gives the Trump/Vance ticket a solid win, 281-257. But if the Trump team loses Pennsylvania and all else remains the same, that gives Harris/Walz (shudder) the win by a closer margin of 276-262.
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It’s tempting to state that, on election night, whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the election, and that’s probably about ninety percent accurate. There are, however, paths to 270 for Trump/Walz that don’t include Pennsylvania. If Trump loses the Keystone State but takes Michigan, which at the moment is within the margin of error, he wins 277-261. He can also lose Pennsylvania and take Wisconsin (Harris +0.8) and Nevada (Harris +1.1) for a 278-260 win.
None of those are comfortable margins. And if you look at these polling aggregates and take them at face value, Pennsylvania remains, as it has been, the key; if the Trump/Vance team wins the Keystone State (which appellation may prove very apt this year), then it becomes very difficult for Harris/Walz to flip enough red-state votes to win. Flipping Georgia would do it, giving Harris a 273-265 victory, but Trump is pulling farther ahead in Georgia, and his burying the hatchet with Governor Kemp is liable to help him hold that state.
Given what data we have to date, it’s tempting to say that if Trump/Vance wins Pennsylvania and Georgia, we can all go in for an early night because after that there doesn’t seem to be much the Harris/Walz ticket can do to rescue their filberts from the nutcracker.
But there’s another factor: The 2020 polling, after the 2016 polling debacle, still managed to badly underestimate Trump’s support in 2020.
So what happened? Were the polls just terribly off in 2020? Not dramatically, no. Yes, polls once again underestimated Donald Trump’s performance, but the magnitude of that error (about 4 percentage points) wasn’t all that different from past presidential contests, such as in 2012 when polls underestimated Barack Obama’s margin of victory by almost 4 points. And there have, of course, been much larger polling errors, too.
Four percentage points; ay, there’s the rub. If these state polls happened to be off by four points, that puts all the battleground states in Trump’s column, for a convincing, mandate-generating 312-226 win. That seems unlikely but not impossible. But Trump voters and Republicans in general are less likely to respond to pollsters, making it all too easy to underestimate support for Republican candidates.
Of course, we won’t know about this year’s polling accuracy until after the election. Looking at polls is fun. It’s interesting. It can give us some clues as to what might happen, and it gives campaigns some ideas as to where to focus their efforts. But the only poll that counts, as noted above, is the one on Election Day, and this year, as I said in a recent VIP piece, turnout will be everything:
Turn out. Come out of the woods of Maine and Vermont, and vote. Turn out. Come down from the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky, of Idaho and Wyoming, and vote. Turn out. Come out of the deserts of Nevada and Arizona, and vote. Turn out. Come forth from the plains of west Texas, of the piney woods of east Texas, and vote. Turn out. Come out of the lowlands of South Carolina and the hills of Georgia, and vote. Turn out. Come out of the fields and pastures of Iowa and Nebraska, of Kansas and Oklahoma, and vote. Turn out. Come out of the great north woods of northern Minnesota, the high plains and badlands of the Dakotas, and vote. Come out of the city neighborhoods of New York, of California, of Illinois, of Michigan, and vote. Turn out. Move onto the highways and byways of the nation, the side roads, the dirt roads, to wherever you need to go to cast your ballot, no matter what the weather, no matter how hot or cold, no matter if it’s raining, snowing or sleeting, and vote.
So, yes, get out there and vote, because on November 6th, the polls will mean nothing, but your vote may well mean everything. And to stay informed, to stay abreast of the issues, and to keep up with all of the up-and-down-ballot races, the other thing you should do is sign up for a VIP membership. VIP status will open a plethora of stories and podcasts here at RedState. Remember that a Gold-level account gets you access to all of our sister sites in Townhall Media: PJ Media, Twitchy, Hot Air, Bearing Arms, and Townhall. Use promo code SAVEAMERICA for a 50% discount.
