US presidential election minus five weeks

Polls and forecast models continue to find little or nothing to separate the two presidential contenders.

All three of the main forecast models are now very much singing from the same song sheet, with The Economist and FiveThirtyEight both putting Kamala Harris’s win probability at 56% and Nate Silver’s differing only insofar as it goes to one decimal place. A very similar story is told by a regularly updated YouGov MRP poll presently drawing on 100,000 respondents, which rates Harris favourite in enough states to get within 13 electoral college votes of a majority and another two (Pennsylvania and Georgia) as toss-ups each with enough votes to get her over the line. Adrian Beaumont’s latest overview is available at The Conversation.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

693 comments on “US presidential election minus five weeks”

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  5. Socrates @ #654 Thursday, October 10th, 2024 – 7:48 am

    Looks like the October surprise is not a surprise for anyone who accepts climate science. Two hurricanes in two weeks.

    Incredible to think Florida, the most vulnerable state, is home to some of the worst climate science denial.

    Six GOP congressmen voted against $20 billion in extra federal disaster funding in the past few weeks.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/08/hurricane-milton-strength-intensity-explainer

    So they can bleat about FEMA not spendinng enough money to help their constituents.

    Republicans are rotten to the core.

  6. Wondering if the bad Quinnipiac poll is a wash from the VP debate?

    Presidential Polling:

    Michigan: Trump 51 // Harris 47
    Wisconsin: Trump 49 // Harris 47
    Pennsylvania: Harris 49 // Trump 47

    Quinnipiac / Oct 7, 2024

  8. Duelling Michigan polls – these guys rated #52 on 538 rankings, Quinninpiac is #17

    Michigan Polling:

    Pres:
    Harris (D): 51%
    Trump (R): 48%

    Senate:
    Slotkin (D): 52%
    Rogers (R): 47%

    Research Co. / Oct 7, 2024 / n=450

  9. The Senate Smoky…

    Nebraska Senate Polling:

    Osborn (I): 48%
    Fischer (R): 46%

    Impact Research / Oct 3, 2024 / n=600

    (Osborn Internal)

  10. Texas Polling:

    Pres:
    Trump (R): 50%
    Harris (D): 45%

    Senate:
    Cruz (R): 47%
    Allred (D): 44%

    Mainstreet Research / Oct 6, 2024 / n=775

  11. Morning sprocket.

    I think quinnipiac is overrated on 538. But they are an honest and open and independent bunch.

    They can be rather off in their polls.

    And state polls in general can be rather off.

    But it is more than a little worrying. They’ve spent a small fortune there.

  12. Guys, guys guys
    Stunning result, whether you like it or not. THIS IS HAPPENING IN ALASKA.

    Major Upset! Democrat beats Republican in Alaska in an area Trump won by 15

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/9/2275763/-Major-Upset-Democrat-beats-Republican-in-Alaska-in-an-area-Trump-won-by-15?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

    “In a major upset, Democrat Grier Hopkins has defeated Republican John Coghill Jr. in the race for mayor of Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska — which voted for Trump by 15 points! Democrats aligned with Hopkins won seats on the Assembly.”

  13. The take-away from that poll should be exactly the same as the take-away from the polls showing Harris having similar modest leads: that this will be close.

    I don’t know how many times that point has to be made. It’s not just some token statement that the campaign needs to make to prevent complacency. It’s probably* close and it’s always been close. Swapping out candidates so late was a big roll of the dice and Trump has a slight in-built advantage here (anyone who says that Harris has the advantage is just goalpost moving so they can gloat about the results if she loses, and downplay them if she wins.)

    *I am using “probably” because there’s that much margin of error in the polling, as well as so many variables at play, that there is a wide spectrum of potential electoral outcomes that could happen this November.

    So what can you do? If you’re Australian, not much. Just chill out and go with it. If you want to react to each poll, go for it (It is a poll discussion website after all.) Just be careful you’re not cherry-picking, or applying double standards in your analyses. Just be prepared for it to go either way. And be prepared that, if your side doesn’t win, the other side are going to be insufferable and there’s also going to be a lot of revisionist history about your candidate and their campaign, and probably a bit of attempted gaslighting.

    And, if you happen to be American and you’re anxious: volunteer, donate, talk to people who might be open to voting your way. Staring at the screen, doomposting or, alternatively, wishcasting doesn’t help anyone or yourself. If your side is still unsuccessful, at least you can have the satisfaction that you did what you could to try and stop that. And if they are successful, you can feel like you contributed to that.

    I don’t mean this to come across as a lecture and it’s already too many paragraphs long. I am just saying it’s the final stretch, it’s anybody’s election to lose at this point and it’s gonna get even more mad from here.

  14. ”
    sprocket_says:
    Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 8:57 am
    Bulwark sponsored poll

    Presidential Polling of 2024 Nikki Haley Voters:

    Trump: 45%
    Harris: 36%

    Unsure: 23%

    Blueprint Polling / Oct 6, 2024

    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/exclusive-poll-finds-large-chunk
    ”

    When Nikki Haley dropped out of the race in April, 20% of her voters said they will not vote for Trump.
    Now that has increased to 36%. In fact they are saying that they will vote for Harris. 92% Democrats are enthusiastic about Harris, Harris ratings are in positive territory and Trump ratings are in negative territory
    AND YET
    Harris is trailing in polls!

  15. For WOW fans out there..

    Kamala Harris’ campaign is livestreaming a Tim Walz rally from Arizona and Azeroth tonight. Yes, Azeroth—the planet from World of Warcraft.

    This will be the first time the Harris campaign will stream live gameplay on its Twitch account. The event, which will take place at 6:30 pm ET, will include a live feed of Walz’s Arizona speech with Preheat, a Twitch creator, playing the game and providing commentary. Preheat is expected to highlight their connection to the campaign and encourage viewers to make a plan to vote.
    ….
    “Our job as the campaign is to break through a historically personalized media landscape, taking the VP and her vision for the future directly to the hardest-to-reach voters and those who will decide this election,” Seth Schuster, a Harris spokesperson, told WIRED of the decision in August.

    Ahead of the rally on Wednesday, Preheat was playing World of Warcraft and instructing viewers on how to defeat one of the more recent raid bosses from The War Within expansion. He has over 50,000 followers on Twitch, and the Harris campaign described him as a volunteer. When asked by WIRED for comment about why they were going to be livestreaming with the campaign, Preheat said they were volunteering for a number of reasons and cited several of the Harris campaign’s platforms.

    https://www.wired.com/story/tim-walz-rally-world-of-warcraft-twitch/

  17. Trump totally unhinged (you may say what is new about it)

    TRUMP THREATENS CBS Over Kamala Harris Interview on 60 Minutes that He Says Was ‘Possibly Illegal’

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/9/2275800/-TRUMP-THREATENS-CBS-Over-Kamala-Harris-Interview-on-60-Minutes-that-He-Says-Was-Possibly-Illegal?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

    “He raged on his social media that…

    “I’ve never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced and diced (‘cut and pasted’) Lyin’ Kamala’s answers to questions, which were virtually incoherent, over and over again, some by as many as four times in a single sentence or thought, all in an effort, possibly illegal as part of the ‘News Division,’ which must be licensed, to make her look ‘more Presidential,’ or a least, better. It may also be a major Campaign Finance Violation.”
    ”

    Read for yourself how he threatened CBS

    He threatened ABC, he threatened CBS but MAGA people say he is not threat to democracy.

  18. Harris polling at +5 in PA 2020 Trump+4 District (UPDATED – Stelson beating Perry as well!)

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/9/2275742/-Harris-polling-at-5-in-PA-2020-Trump-4-District?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

    “SP&R
    @SusquehannaPR
    In Pa’s hotly contested 10th Congressional District, our poll out later today shows Harris leading Trump in this GOP-leaning district 46:41. Trump won this district +4 in ‘20. This is not a good trajectory for GOP incumbent Con. Scott Perry. More tweets to follow shortly.
    11:52 PM · Oct 9, 2024
    ·
    947.9K
    Views”

    An NC affiliate

    Janelle Stelson leads Scott Perry in pre-debate Pennsylvania 10th poll

    https://www.abc27.com/pennsylvania-politics/janelle-stelson-leads-scott-perry-in-pre-debate-pennsylvania-10th-poll/

    “Harrisburg-based Susquehanna Polling and Research released the poll that shows Stelson leading Perry 48% to 39% with a 5% margin of error.

    Perry also has a high unfavorable rating in the poll; 38% of voters view him unfavorably, and just 27% have a favorable opinion. Stelson has a 40% favorable opinion among voters, and just 20% say they view her unfavorably.”

  19. Cat

    “So they can bleat about FEMA not spending enough money to help their constituents.

    Republicans are rotten to the core.”
    ——————————
    Exactly. They would literally let people die in order to win office.

  20. The take-away from that poll should be exactly the same as the take-away from the polls showing Harris having similar modest leads: that this will be close.

    Lawyers eagerly crouched at the starting line.
    Engines pumping and thumping in time
    The green light flashes, the flags go up
    Churning and burning, they yearn for the cup

  22. Women are not to be underestimated in this election. Overturning roe vs wade is not going to be forgotten.
    This alone will get the Dems over the line.

  23. C@tmomma, thanks very much for taking the time to post all of that article from the Bulwark. Really interesting reading and generally quite reassuring from a Harris perspective.

  25. Wat Tyler @9:47

    A perfect summation of the situation and for what lies ahead of us on this blog after the results are in.

    Particularly agree with the goalpost shifting some posters have been frequently up to recently to brush it off – ‘it was so obvious, I don’t know why you’re all celebrating ‘ – or so they can revel in their gloating.

    https://youtu.be/kjJ1bsnxxhs?si=lcXky1AC_emHT7zX

  28. Ven says:
    Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 10:55 am
    Trump totally unhinged (you may say what is new about it)

    Trump campaigns against himself once again. There is one very simple way for US voters to rid themselves of Trump’s idiocy: vote for Harris. They will do it.

    On the subject of hurricanes….2 in 2 weeks. Not to be soon forgotten. However, this is merely an indication of what is to come. It won’t be too many years and there will be one a week for months on end. They will come thick and fast.

    The Gulf and Mid-Atlantic coast will become uninsurable. It will become very difficult to justify investment in a huge zone that will become annually disaster-prone.

    This is an area where around 100 million Americans now live. They are mostly Republican-led. That is, they are led by self-serving idiots. Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas…home to the foolhardy. White Christian Nationalist-Reactionary Nativist….dumb as a box of bolts. They seem to be incapable of observation, reflection and change.

  30. A lot of Aussies are very invested in this U.S election, to the point that some of us probably know far more about their electoral system and polling than most Americans who after all are the ones who will choose between Harris and Trump. If the shoe was on the other foot, most Yanks would know zero about Australian politics or world politics in general.
    According to a Lowy Institute poll, almost 70% of Aussies want Kamala to win, there were similar findings in 2016(most of us wanted Hillary to triumph). But we don’t get a vote in it, we can only look on as bystanders and react either in joy or horror or really not care too much.
    If Trump does win, it’ll be more to do with the economy, or the perception of his supporters that they’ve gone backwards economically in the last 4 years – has Harris really done enough to stress that economic conditions in the U.S are improving, inflation is going down, gas prices are decreasing etc?
    Oh, I know there’d be a sexism element to a Trump victory too, and some racism also, can’t deny that.
    Trump of course is the ultimate con man or snake oil salesman and I doubt he cares one iota for the plight of the average working class white male voter in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, but hey, those people in particular keep voting for him.
    Why is Trump doing better this time around with young black and Hispanic men? I’d love to know the answer to that one, is it just a macho thing, men love the whole Hulk Hogan/in your face style that Trump and JD Vance promote?
    Kamala needs a huge turnout of African American women, and white suburban women and young people, that’s very obvious, and in the right places too. Running up the total in California but losing the rust belt – won’t cut it.
    I’ve come to the conclusion that her campaign made a mistake choosing Tim Walz as VP, he didn’t do well in that recent debate with the younger version of Trump – Shapiro is a sharper performer and he would have locked up Pennsylvania for her, similarly Pete Buttigieg would have added a new element to the ticket, and he’s a smart analytical bloke too – yeah, I know, the gay thing is a liability in some parts of America.

  31. Donald’s sinking ship features the first fleeing litigant

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/9/2275686/-Donald-s-sinking-ship-features-the-first-fleeing-litigant?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

    “Former rich guy, paramour of Russian spy, Marina Butina and co-conspirator in the seizing of 2020 voting data and other Trump WH/J6 shenanigans, Patrick Byrne has fled the country. Darn those Venezuelan hit squads. Abscond, not ABSCAM.

    Patrick Byrne fleeing to a non-extraditing country is predictable and supports the view the kinetic conspiracy is close to charging. Though the Perry phone is still in litigation, Smith needs to charge and execute arrest warrants ASAP or others will flee.”

    There are swag of tweets linked to this article regarding this subject.

  33. We shouldnt put any stock in small sample district polls. But if we wanted to 😉 we would be talking about the fairly reputable Susquehanna pollsters 300 sample poll in PA-10 showing a large turnaround and flip to the Dems for that seat.

    2020 and 2022 had GOP incumbent up by 6pts. Susquehanna has Dem up by 9.
    https://www.abc27.com/pennsylvania-politics/janelle-stelson-leads-scott-perry-in-pre-debate-pennsylvania-10th-poll/

    It does tie in with a couple of state polls showing PA improving for Harris.

  34. Democracy Sausage, I was a Sharpio faan, but I think on reflection he would have outshone Harris. Cant have that in a VP pick, so Waltz if fine in that context. VP debates have been shown not to move the dial at all.

  35. As for x-tabs. Nate Silver has this to say….

    I have a particular aversion to what’s sometimes called “crosstab diving” — digging into the internals of a poll until you find something you don’t like. One reason for this is that it provides for nearly unlimited opportunities to cherry-pick evidence. A poll of 1000 voters might have a sample of something like 50 or 60 Hispanic women, for example, which comes with a margin of error of around 13 points. It’s very common to hear complaints like “THIS POLL HAS BIDEN DOWN 42-51 WITH HISPANIC WOMEN? NO WAY. IT’S GARBAGE.” These complaints nearly always reflect the crosstab-diver’s political orientation — you don’t see Democrats complaining when Joe Biden polls implausibly well with some subgroup — and almost never make any effort to account for the margins of error associated with small subgroups or the problem of multiple comparisons. If a poll lists 15 or 20 demographic breakouts, it’s a statistical near-inevitability that you can find something to make the poll look bad.

  36. Ven, please, winning a mayoral election in some small town in Alaska is not an indicator of literally anything other than Hunting Bob beat Fishing Joe.

  37. Agreed, Cross Tab diving is for the birds, the sample sizes are so small it’s literally not maths (ok figuratively it’s not maths but you get the point)

  38. Mostly Interested @ #684 Thursday, October 10th, 2024 – 2:55 pm

    Democracy Sausage, I was a Sharpio faan, but I think on reflection he would have outshone Harris. Cant have that in a VP pick, so Waltz if fine in that context. VP debates have been shown not to move the dial at all.

    I was of two opinions at the time;
    1. It wouldn’t make much of a difference
    2. WTF would I know.

    In hindsight, I still dont know and still think it makes little difference. All that really mattered was that the ticket didnt clash.

    I was a little interested in the option of choosing someone who could really hit in interviews and on the airwaves. Buttigieg. That was because I was worried at how well Harris would do in these. However she has done pretty well. Perhaps not great, and perhaps she needs to do more. But better than I expected.

    I was also interested in the options north and south – picking someone in the GLakes/rust belt/blue wall region vs someone in the sunbelt. I still find that interesting because, at some stage, the blue wall will fail (again) and making the sunbelt more competitive (including Texas and Florida) is something the Democrats need to invest in long term. The question is – does a VP selection really matter in that (short term or long term)?

  39. • A thousand-year flood: Milton has dropped about 16 inches of rain on St. Petersburg, representing a more than a 1-in-1000 year rainfall for the area(due to Hurrican Milton). Meanwhile, there are “multiple fatalities” in St. Lucie County, Florida, from a tornado outbreak earlier in the day, CNN affiliate WPTV reports.

  40. For everyone’s sake, Biden and Kamala need to be right on top of the hurricane response, rebuilding, and everything that goes along with it.

  43. C@tmomma

    “Keir Starmer used to be a lot more like Jeremy Corbyn but if you actually take a look at the things he has done since being elected, and especially when we see Rachel Reeves Budget, then it will become obvious that he is more in the Economically Conservative (a position the actual Conservatives have abandoned)/Socially Progressive mould.”

    Economically conservative?! Tell me one thing he’s done that’s economically conservative. He talks a good talk on prudent stewardship (even Corbyn/McDonnell could do that) when he wants to, but that’s it. I haven’t heard him even propose anything economically conservative, only rolling back pro-business laws because they are ‘pro worker’ and introducing/reintroducing heavily trade union-oriented legislation. They are Labour’s paymasters after all.

    Whilst cutting Winter fuel allowance for all but the very poorest pensioners – the whole political spectrum is united against the cruelty of this, from Conservatives (who introduced it a few years back and promised to keep it) to Greens, Lib Dems, Nats and the left-wing of Starmer’s own party. The phrase ‘heat or eat’ as regards pensioners this Winter is going to be hung round Labour’s neck again and again unless they finally drop their obstinacy and scrap it at the budget later this month.

    The optics aren’t good when there’s rows over advisers’ pay not being enough at £180k and when you’re finding money somehow for 23% increases for doctors and train drivers (even they already earn 60k a year, compared to pensioners 13k).

    Even those who didn’t like Starmer thought up to the election that he was a shrewd operator. Although he’s ruthless when it comes to dealing with people (which served him well when ditching Corbyn and Abbott – temporarily – from the party), he now looks like a deer stuck in the headlights and his poling approval ratings have already plummeted to mid-minus 30s net.

    I do agree that Starmer is socially ‘progressive’, if that’s what you call saying some women have a penis (he’s backtracked on that since but not apologised to his own MP he castigated for it – she’s now just left the party) and being very keen on legislating for euthanasia (sorry, ‘assisted dying’ is the correct term) – another attack on the most vulnerable who can least defend themselves, as all the data in countries with such a law have proved it to be in spite of prior assurances.

    I do wonder if Rachel Reeves is feeling tortured in her position – or maybe we will find out she’s a lot more hard left underneath than I ever thought. I do think she’s genuinely a strong ‘numbers person’ so competent for [what you would call the] Finance Secretary role whatever her beliefs, so hopefully she won’t literally send the country bankrupt at least.

    Rant over! (for now 😉 )

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