Election Day 2024: Here Are Trump’s Clearest Paths To Victory (Live Updates)

05 Nov 2024 by Sara Dorn · Forbes

Topline

Former President Donald Trump heads into Election Day having significantly narrowed the polling lead Vice President Kamala Harris carved out against him shortly after her entrance into the race, with averages showing Trump leading four of the seven battlegrounds, but by such slim margins the race could be either candidate’s to win.

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, holds a campaign rally at the PPG ... [+] Paints Arena on November 04, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With one day left before the general election, Trump is campaigning for re-election in the battleground states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)Getty Images

Key Facts

As polls indicate, Trump’s clearest path to victory runs through the Sun Belt states of Arizona and Nevada, where he’s ahead by 2.2 points and 0.3 points, respectively, and in the historically red states of Georgia and North Carolina, where he leads by one point in each, according to Five Thirty Eight polling averages.

If Trump wins all of the non-swing states he won in 2020, plus the Sun Belt and Southern swing states, and one of the three “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, then it would put him over the 270-electoral vote threshold needed to win.

According to polls, Trump is most likely to win Pennsylvania, where he and Harris are tied, which would give him 287 electoral votes.

While less likely, Trump could also theoretically win if he takes back the three “blue wall” states that he secured in 2020, plus either Arizona, Georgia or North Carolina.

Trump lost to Biden in six of this year’s swing states in 2020, with the exception of North Carolina, and he won six of the seven in 2016, with the exception of Nevada.

What To Watch For

A repeat of polling flaws from 2020 and 2016 could lead to an electoral college sweep for either candidate. All seven swing states have average polling margins of 2.2 points or less, meaning that if polls are off by just two to three points in favor of one candidate, they could win by a landslide. Statistician Nate Silver predicts either candidate has a 60% chance of winning at least six of several battlegrounds, he wrote in a piece for The New York Times, in which he predicts a win for Trump based on his gut instinct, but warns “50-50 is the only responsible forecast.”

What We Don’t Know

When the results will be called. After North Carolina and Georgia, Wisconsin is the next swing state where results are expected, likely late on Election Day or early the next morning, followed by Michigan the day after the election, officials in both states have said. Pennsylvania could take several days to tabulate results, while Nevada and Arizona are expected to be the slowest to count ballots. Officials in Arizona estimate it could take 10 to 13 days before results are finalized.

Big Number

1.2. That’s how many points Harris leads Trump by in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average as of Monday. He is also ahead in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, while Harris leads in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is tied, though all of the races are within 2.2 points or less.

Key Background

Trump announced his latest campaign for president nearly two years ago as the GOP’s loyalty to the former president appeared to stand on shaky ground. He declared his third run on the heels of unexpected GOP losses of his preferred candidates in the November 2022 midterms that many in the party blamed Trump for. At the time, some party leaders were still also bewildered—if not publicly outspoken—about their distress over Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Trump sparked more backlash among Republicans when he dined with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and controversial rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago just weeks after announcing his campaign—compounding criticism that seemed as though Trump’s grip over the party may be loosening. But his criminal indictments the following year—first in his Manhattan hush money trial in March 2023, followed by his federal election interference and classified document cases, and his indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, against his efforts to overturn the election in the state—united the party behind Trump as he claimed the cases amounted to election interference designed to prevent him from retaking the White House in 2020. Trump surged ahead in polls following President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate performance, but he briefly trailed Harris following her entrance into the race, before narrowing the gap nationally and in the seven swing states. Trump tapped Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate in July.

Tangent

Trump’s second campaign for office is in many ways a more aggressive version of his first, with ramped up rhetoric against immigration, promises to seek retribution against his political enemies and a continuation of his false claims that he is the true winner of the 2020 election. He’s promised to enact even stricter border policies if elected, including mass arrests and deportations of undocumented migrants. He has floated plans to raise tariffs by 10% across the board and 60% on imports from China, proposals most experts warn could raise prices for consumers as the cost of tariffs would likely be absorbed by some combination of U.S. businesses that import goods, the customers who purchase them and foreign businesses that export them.

Chief Critic

Harris has focused much of her campaign on attacking Trump over his role in Jan. 6 and his incendiary rhetoric against his political adversaries, warning in what she dubbed her “closing argument” last week in Washington that Trump is “unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.” Her campaign has also sought to cast Trump’s increased penchant for rambling rants and wild behavior on stage as signs that he’s exhausted and his mental acuity has slipped, pointing to the 30 minutes Trump spent dancing on stage to music during a rally in Pennsylvania last month and his refusal to release his medical records.