Florida was called for the Republicans in both the Presidential and Senate elections, closing one of the paths to the Democrats retaining control of the Senate. One of the other paths is in Texas, where right now Cruz is ahead of Allred 51.1 – 47.0 with 53% of the votes in. Allred is at least running ahead of Harris, who is currently trailing Trump 45.1 – 53.6, and as I was writing this NBC called Texas for Trump.

Georgia and North Carolina are both looking more likely for Trump than for Harris at this point, but it is still early.

Four non-competitive states whose polls close very early have been called: IN, KY, and WV for Trump, and VT for Harris. Early vote is starting to filter in from Georgia, but it’s too early to form any conclusions. Of the swing states, Georgia and North Carolina are the ones for which the vote is expected to be counted relatively swiftly.

The one thing we do know so far that we didn’t know before polls started closing is that miracles are not forthcoming in Florida. With 73% of the vote in (largely early vote), Trump leads Harris 54.1 – 45.1, and Senator Scott leads Mucarsel-Powell 53.7 – 44.9, although neither race has been called yet. The abortion amendment in Florida is currently ahead 58.3 – 41.7, but it would require 60% to pass.

It’s about 4pm the day before the election, and while Nate Silver may yet push through one more additional run of his model, I thought this would be a good time to memorialize the state of the race going into tomorrow, as his model sees it.

Right now he has Trump as the narrowest of favorites, with a 50.4% chance to win 270+ EV, versus a 49.2% chance for Harris to win 270+ EV, and a 0.4% chance of a 269-269 tie. This is in spite of Harris having a 2.3% projected edge in the national vote share, as well as a 5 EV edge in the weighted-average outcome, 271.5 to 266.5.

As I had done back in August, I’ll start by listing the “very safe” states, namely those for which Silver’s model projects at least a 95.5% (two-sigma) chance of victory for one party or the other. In most cases, these states’ probabilities are closer to 1.0 than they had been in August, presumably reflecting a reality that the extreme things that would have had to happen to get those states to break the other way haven’t occurred. Italicized states are ones that have moved into “very safe” territory between August and now; none have defected from “very safe”.

Very Safe Democrat (191): California (100.0%), Colorado (97.3%), Connecticut (99.7%), Delaware (99.9%), District of Columbia (100.0%), Hawaii (96.4%), Illinois (99.9%), Maine-1 (99.3%), Massachusetts (99.8%), Maryland (100.0%), New Jersey (99.4%), New York (99.8%), Oregon (97.2%), Rhode Island (99.3%), Vermont (99.8%), Washington (99.7%)

Very Safe Republican (116): Alabama (99.8%), Arkansas (99.6%), Idaho (99.9%), Indiana (99.9%), Kansas (99.8%), Kentucky (99.9%), Louisiana (99.3%), Missouri (99.9%), Montana (98.0%), Nebraska at large (99.8%), Nebraska-1 (99.8%), Nebraska-3 (99.9%), North Dakota (99.2%), Oklahoma (100.0%), South Carolina (98.7%), South Dakota (99.2%), Tennessee (100.0%), Utah (99.1%), West Virginia (99.7%), Wyoming (99.9%)

Now, from Trump’s perspective, the path to get from 116 towards 270 starts like this, in descending likelihood order:

• Ohio, 95.1% (133)
• Texas, 95.0% (173)
• Mississippi, 94.9% (179)
• Florida, 92.5% (209)
• Iowa, 83.2% (215)
• Alaska, 76.9% (218)
• Maine-2, 76.2% (219)

Whereas from the Harris perspective, the path from 191 towards 270 starts like this:

• Virginia, 93.9% (204)
• Nebraska-2, 93.0% (205)
• Minnesota, 90.7% (215)
• Maine at large, 87.3% (217)
• New Mexico, 87.0% (222)
• New Hampshire, 73.5% (226)

As such, before we get into the 7 canonical swing states, if everything breaks according to expectation Harris would have a 226-219 lead.

The 7 swing states, ordered from Trump’s perspective:

• Arizona, 71.7% (230)
• North Carolina, 61.3% (246)
• Georgia, 61.0% (262)
• Nevada, 53.1% (268)
• Pennsylvania, 52.8% (287)
• Wisconsin, 40.9% (297)
• Michigan, 38.5% (312)

And the same 7 states, but ordered from the Harris perspective:

• Michigan, 61.5% (241)
• Wisconsin, 59.1% (251)
• Pennsylvania, 47.2% (270)
• Nevada, 46.9% (276)
• Georgia, 39.0% (292)
• North Carolina, 38.7% (308)
• Arizona, 28.3% (319)

For 6 of the 7 swing states, the expected margin of victory from Silver’s model is 1.2% or less; the exception is Arizona, where Silver now sees Trump as a 2.4% favorite. As such, if we posit a 1.5% “uniform swing” towards Harris relative to the model’s expectation, Harris would win 308-230 (with Trump’s only swing-state victory being Arizona). On the other hand if we instead posit a 1.5% uniform swing towards Trump, then Trump would win 312-226 (with Harris losing all 7 swing states).

I’ll end with a fantasy scenario for Harris… Silver’s model has Trump as a 5.2% favorite in Iowa, whereas the Des Moines Register poll has Harris by 3 in Iowa. If there’s something systemic, rather than Iowa-specific, behind that result, then we’d be talking about roughly an 8% uniform swing towards Harris relative to the model; and at that point she’d be winning not only the swing states and Iowa, but also Florida, Maine-2, Ohio, and Texas for a 413-125 landslide. As much as I’d like to believe Harris ought to be competitive in all of those states, that seems pretty rich.

I cast my ballot several days ago, although not immediately after my most recent post as I had suggested. On that Friday afternoon I had only a 30-minute window in which I would have time to vote, but after 30 minutes in line I was still 10-15 minutes from being through, so I had to leave without voting. I came back on Monday morning, and that time it only took about 20-25 minutes to vote.

Early voting turnout has indeed been robust, particularly in states like Georgia and North Carolina that had not embraced alternative voting mechanisms in 2020 as much as many other states had. It seems unwise to attempt to draw any conclusions from this year’s early voting patterns, though, as voter behavior appears to be changing more rapidly than we have data points from which to extrapolate.

A week ago tonight Trump had his rally at Madison Square Garden, which will be best remembered for one of his warm-up acts having told a (supposed) joke in which he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” A NYTimes headline referred to the rally as “a closing carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.” Two days later, Harris gave her last major speech of the campaign before a reported crowd of 75,000 at the Ellipse in D.C. More recently, last night she made a surprise appearance in the cold open of Saturday Night Live, appearing with former cast member Maya Rudolph, who has been providing the show’s Harris impression this fall.

None of these last-minute activities appear to have changed the underlying dynamics of the race, which remains tight tight tight. Possibly too tight; Nate Silver and other armchair observers have recently noted that the spread of reported polls in swing states is actually far too narrow than what one would expect to see from polling a race that was a dead heat, raising the possibility that pollsters are, consciously or unconsciously, massaging poll results so that they do not deviate much from the conventional wisdom.

Not every poll of late has been boring, mind you. The Des Moines Register’s polling operation has one of the best reputations in the business, and in particular did fairly well this spring with its final poll of the four-way race in the Republican Iowa caucus. Yesterday they published their final presidential poll of Iowa, with the startling result that Harris was ahead, 47-44. For what it’s worth, the same outfit’s final poll 4 years ago was Trump 48-41, and the final result in Iowa was Trump 53-45. Back in August Iowa was on the list of states that I categorized as “expected Republican” (meaning an 80% to 95% chance of Trump victory in Silver’s model), the same category as Ohio and Texas – a set of three former and perhaps future swing states that, in the politics of the early 2020s, look staunchly red. As such Iowa has been getting next to no attention in this campaign, although I imagine ads from the Blue Dot have been filtering into the western counties.

But if a first-rate pollster is showing Harris with a lead in Iowa… well, just maybe we’re in a for a very different election night than we thought we were. Of course, never forget that in late October 2020 there was a poll from ABC and the Washington Post showing Biden ahead 57-40 in Wisconsin, a state he would ultimately win by only 0.63%.

The Senate race continues to look more rosy for the Republicans than the Democrats. The Democrats have a tough parlay to get to 50 Senate seats. First, there are three swing-state incumbents that need to win re-election: Rosen in Nevada, Casey in Pennsylvania, and Baldwin in Wisconsin. Next, the Democrats have to defend two open swing-state seats, namely Simena’s old seat in Arizona and Stabenow’s seat in Michigan, as well as an open blue-state seat in which the Republicans have run a compelling candidate, namely Cardin’s seat in Maryland. If all that happens, the Democrats should be at 48, so two of the following five things would also need to happen: Brown holds Ohio; Tester holds Montana; Allred upsets Cruz in Texas; Mucarsel-Powell upsets Scott in Florida; and independent candidate Osborn prevails over Fischer in Nebraska. (Moreover, it is not clear that Osborn would caucus with the Democrats if he were to win.) All of this seems like a parlay that certainly could happen on a very good night for the Democrats, but feels less likely than not to actually happen. Senate Republicans are set to vote on November 13th between Cornyn, Thune, and (assuming he wins) Florida’s Scott as the replacement for McConnell as Senate GOP head and, perhaps, the new Majority Leader.

And then there’s the House, which is too chaotic to really model with confidence. There will be no shortage of interesting seats to watch on election night and beyond. In addition to warily watching my own seat (Craig’s MN-02), I will be very interested in the neighboring seat of WI-03, where an appealing young woman Democrat named Cooke is challenging the incumbent freshman Republican, Van Orden. My instinct is that Hakeem Jeffries is a slight favorite to become Speaker, but we shall see.

The night before last, Vice-President Harris appeared on a CNN town hall, in the time slot that would have been the third and final Presidential debate had Trump not declined to participate.

Around that same time, word started to leak that Harris will hold a major speech one week before the election in D.C. at the Ellipse, the same spot where Trump’s January 6th rally was held. This will come two days after Trump hosts a major rally at Madison Square Garden; collectively, these two events appear to be the two final significant public events of the campaign.

The big news of the week has been the decision made by General Kelly, the longest-serving of Trump’s chiefs of staff, to go on the record with the New York Times in his criticism of Trump, including calling Trump a fascist. This echoes recent reports in Bob Woodward’s new book that General Mattis, who had been Joint Chief under Trump, also believes Mattis is a fascist. In the wake of these developments, Harris is now also publicly calling Trump a fascist, starting at the aforementioned CNN town hall.

Another recent development that I’ve not previously discussed is Elon Musk’s efforts on behalf of Trump. He has appeared at rallies with Trump, and by this point he appears to have given $119 million to a Trump-aligned super PAC as well as $12 million to other super PACs supporting Republican Senate candidates. He has also controversially offered a $1 million daily lottery prize offered only to individuals who are registered to vote in a swing state and have signed a petition expressing support for (Musk’s interpretation of) the 1st and 2nd Amendments; this project appears to be illegal.

Polls have continued to drift slightly in Trump’s direction of late. Silver’s model as of yesterday has Trump at 54% to win the electoral college, with Harris’ popular vote margin down to 1.9%.

The Bezos-owned Washington Post announced that it would no longer make endorsements in presidential elections, returning to its pre-1976 policy. This comes in the wake of the L.A. Times’ new owner’s recent decision to block its editorial board from endorsing Harris, prompting its editorials editor to quit.

I’m going to go and early vote here in a few minutes. Guess I need to make up my mind. 🙂

It’s getting close enough to the election that I’ve now realized that all the “Day -NN” numbers used in previous blog posts were off by one – I should have been truncating up, not down, from the countdown clock that I’d been using to determine the title of each post. The election is two weeks from tomorrow, so today needs to be Day -15, not Day -14.

My enthusiasm for blogging about the election has waned recently, largely out of a feeling that there’s not really anything new to say. By all appearances, the election remains extremely tight and uncertain. Silver’s model has ticked a little back in Trump’s direction recently, with Harris’ chances now at only 47.0%, but we’re still talking about coin flip territory. The reality appears to be that there is not going to be any clear favorite going into Election Day. I still don’t understand how it can be true that this is where we’re at, but every indication is that it is indeed where we’re at. Better to save up my energy for blogging once the vote has started to be counted.

Four years ago, I had started my Election 2020 series of blog posts 5 days before the election. In hindsight things then did not look nearly as close or uncertain as they turned out to be, or as they appear to be now. That election took 4 days for the major media organizations to call the result of the Presidential election (and 10 days for the last states to be called), and 7 days to determine which party would be in control of the House. While I could be wrong, I suspect it will take longer to make both calls this year. And, of course, there’s the possibility of post-election shenanigans, as discussed in a recent Politico article entitled “The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway.”

One amusing piece of recent legal news: The federal public defenders representing the man accused of lying in wait outside Trump’s Florida golf course to assassinate Trump have filed a request that Judge Cannon recuse herself, on the grounds that her appointment by Trump, as well as her actions in U.S. vs. Trump (Florida edition) and Trump’s endorsement of those actions, together have created an appearance of impartiality towards Trump and hence against their client.

The Vice-Presidential debate took place four days ago. In many ways it was like a time machine took us back to the politics we used to have: A debate that was primarily about policy rather than personal attacks, and where the candidates often had complimentary things to say about one another.

But in other ways it was a reminder of what our politics have become. Vanity Fair’s headline perhaps put it best: “JD Vance Won The Debate–If You Ignore The Facts”. Vance was, as one might expect from a Yale Law grad, a very accomplished debater. The problem is, he painted a world in which Trump peacefully transferred power on January 20th without fuss; in which the real threat to democracy was the Biden Administration’s efforts to stop the spread of misinformation on social media about COVID-19; in which Trump saved Obamacare; and in which illegal immigration is a major driver of the housing crisis. (As somebody tweeted: “Love the idea of immigrants crossing the border and immediately outbidding a white couple for a 3 bed/2 bath in suburban Virginia.”) Perhaps the most memorable line of the debate was Vance’s retort to a rare interjection from the moderator: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check.”

Vance may have won the debate, but narrowly if so; and life rapidly moved on.

The next morning, Judge Chutkan released a redacted version of Special Counsel Smith’s 165-page brief on how the SCOTUS presidential immunity framework from Trump v. U.S. ought to, in the government’s view, impact proceedings in U.S. v. Trump (Jan 6th edition). The redactions were surprisingly modest, basically just replacing names with numbered codes for co-conspirators (CC), other persons (P), and companies (C); however in most cases it is pretty clear who or what the codes represent.

The day after that, former co-chair of the Jan 6th Committee Liz Cheney campaigned with Vice-President Harris in the Wisconsin town of Ripon (in which the Republican Party was first formed in the early 1850s), under signs reading “Country Before Party”.

Earlier in the week Hurricane Helene wrecked devastation in Florida, Georgia, and especially western North Carolina. As of today the death toll is up to 227, making Helene the deadliest storm in the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. And just today it appears that another storm, Milton, could strike Florida on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. The political ramifications of these storms in swing states remain unclear.

Port workers struck in midweek, and there were concerns this strike could create severe havoc leading up to the election; however, the strike was settled fairly quickly, and without President Biden having to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act.

Today Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the July assassination attempt, without incident. And in other assassination attempt news that I had missed last week: The federal case against the man who was hiding in the bushes outside Trump’s golf course allegedly seeking to kill him was randomly assigned to, of all people, Judge Cannon. I wonder how fast she’ll move that case along.

Nothing has changed this week in the polls’ assessment of the race; today Silver’s model is at 56.1% for Harris, on a national vote share of +2.7%, virtually unchanged from last week.

It’s been a relatively quiet week.

Perhaps the most important event of the week transpired in Nebraska, where State Senator McDonnell confirmed his continued opposition to a winner-take-all electoral vote allocation in that state, prompting Governor Pullen to rule out calling a special legislative session to try and change the law prior to the 2024 election. This preserves a Democratic path to a 270-268 victory that involves retaining MI/PA/WI while losing AZ/GA/NV, with the 270th vote coming from Nebraska’s 2nd district, the ‘blue dot’ of Omaha in the midwestern sea of red.

The importance of NE-2 was underscored by a new CNN poll this week, showing Harris with a 53-42 lead in that district. The same poll also showed that district’s incumbent representative, Republican Don Bacon, trailing 44-50 in his race against Tony Vargas; this is the second recent poll to show Bacon, previously considered the favorite, 6 points behind in what could be a key race for Democrats in their bid to retake the House.

As of this morning Silver’s model has Harris at 57.3% to win, on a national popular vote margin of +2.7%. Silver currently has NV, PA, WI and MI all in the 59-66% range for Harris, and NC, GA, and AZ all in the 58-65% range for Trump.

We are now only three days away from the Vice-Presidential debate, which seems increasingly likely to be the last debate of this electoral cycle. Harris had recently accepted a CNN invite to debate Trump on October 23rd, 13 days before the election; however Trump refused, claiming it is too late to hold another debate. (In 2012, the third and final Obama-Romney debate took place on October 22nd; the third and final Clinton-Trump debate in 2016 was on October 19th.)

On the legal front, this week a New York appellate court held oral arguments on Trump’s appeal of Judge Engoron’s verdict in the Trump Org fraud case. It is unclear from the arguments how the court might rule, and whether or not that ruling will come before the election. And Special Counsel Smith just filed with Judge Chutkan, under seal, an supersized brief on how the SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling in Trump v. U.S. impacts the indictment in U.S. v. Trump (D.C. edition); however as of this writing it is unclear if/when portions of the brief will be redacted and unsealed.

In political corruption news this week, federal charges were filed against the sitting major of New York City, Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat. Interestingly, he is currently on the slate of Democratic electors in New York, raising one observer to raise the possibility of Harris winning 270-268 but Adams acting as a faithless elector to swing the election to Trump (since a Republican house would get to break a 269-269 tie).

Finally, just like any Presidential candidate would do forty days out from the election, Trump this week announced a new line of Trump watches, including a limited edition watch priced at $100,000. Ah, the cognitive dissonance of Vance incorrectly complaining about the high cost of eggs while Trump is trying to get people to pay $100,000 for a watch that likely costs $20,000 to produce.

Some hijinks may be afoot in Nebraska, raising the possibility that a small number of state legislators could tip the scales on the 2024 presidential election before the ballots are cast.

Nebraska is of course one of only two states, the other being Maine, who award 1 electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, plus 2 to the state-wide winner. Nebraska’s current practice started in 1992, and there have since been two occasions – 2008 and 2020 – where the so-called “Blue Dot” of Omaha awarded its single vote to the Democratic candidate. There was discussion back in April that Republicans sought to change that practice and revert to the more common practice of awarding all electoral votes on a statewide basis; however, that would have required a two-thirds majority of the (unicameral) Nebraska legislature, and that level of support for the change did not exist.

Well, according to new reporting from the Washington Post and New York Times, Trump is making a renewed push to get Nebraska to change its rules in time for this fall’s election. As I recently discussed, there is a very plausible electoral map where Harris wins 270-268 if Nebraska allocates its votes the way it currently does, but where Trump would win the election (after the House votes state-by-state to resolve a 269-269 tie) if Nebraska changes its approach. The key legislative holdout at this point is State Senator Mike McDonnell, a former Democrat who switched parties earlier this year over reproductive and transgender rights; he is term-limited but may be seeking to run for mayor of Omaha next year. If McDonnell can be convinced to switch his position, two other holdouts may follow in which case the Republicans may have the votes; and they may be able to make this change, via a special legislative session, any time up until the day before election day.

When Nebraska was considering this in the spring, the conventional wisdom was that if it were to make the change, then the Democrats controlling the Maine state government would enact the same change. This would preserve balance in close-fought elections, trading Omaha’s Democratic-leaning electoral vote with the Republican-leaning electoral vote in Northern Maine. However, by delaying the Republicans may have gained the upper hand. While Maine could (unlike Nebraska) apparently pass this change with simple majorities in both houses, such a bill would not take effect until 90 days after passage; in order to enact a bill that would take immediate effect, there would need to be two-thirds majorities in both houses, and the Maine Democrats are not believed to have the necessary votes for that.

But this week’s potential electoral hijinks are not limited to Nebraska. There has been a lot of concern in certain circles lately about the Georgia Election Board, the membership of which has seen significant turnover this year with the new majority seen as pro-Trump. In the latest of several potentially disruptive rules changes made by the Board, this week they voted to require an immediate hand count of the number of ballots, to verify that the total is consistent with the results of the machine count and resolve any inconsistencies that may be found. Critics of the proposal say that it is impractical in all but the smallest counties, as well as unlawful.

Silver’s model has Harris’s odds of winning up to 51% for the first time since the DNC ended, with an expected national popular vote margin of 50.6% to 48.3%. Right now NV (52.6%), PA (53.7%), WI (55.4%), and MI (61.8%) are all leaning slightly to Harris, while Trump is slightly favored in NC (61.7%), GA (64.1%), and AZ (64.5%).

This week two different groups filed amicus briefs with the 11th Circuit in support of the government’s appeal of Judge Cannon’s dismissal of the charges in U.S. v. Trump (Florida edition). One brief came from CREW, who was responsible for bringing the Colorado case that led to this spring’s SCOTUS decision in Trump v. Anderson; the other came from a newer group called State Democracy Defenders Action, whose board members include George Conway. Both the CREW and SDDA briefs urge the 11th Circuit, in addition to overturning Cannon’s ruling, to exercise its supervisory authority to re-assign the case to a judge other than Cannon. Special Counsel Smith did not take that position in the government’s brief, although many pundits had suggested he ought to.

Finally, yesterday the lock-up period on Trump’s majority holdings of TMTG expired, although there’s no indication that he sold any stock and he has said he won’t. DJT’s stock price was down 26% for the week, closing yesterday at a new low of $13.55; it has been the worst-performing stock in the Russell 1000 since Aug 5th, losing about half its value in that time.

Over the weekend, there was what is commonly being called an “apparent assassination attempt” on Trump, at his golf course in West Palm Beach FL. The would-be assassin allegedly spent 12 hours hidden in shrubbery on the perimeter of Trump’s course, only for his gun barrel to be spotted by the Secret Service when Trump was one hole away from reaching the gunman’s position. The alleged individual involved is a white male in his late 50s with a lengthy criminal record, and who in 2020 had posted on social media that he’d voted for Trump in 2016 but had become disillusioned.

Prior to this event, it was starting to look as through Harris was seeing a post-debate bump in the polls. Having said that, Nate Silver noted today that there have not been many high-quality, post-debate, state-level polls released yet. As a result his model, which at this writing gives Harris a 44% chance of winning the electoral college, may not yet fully reflect her strong debate performance. I’ll wait another week or two before I start paying too much attention again to Silver’s model.

Silver did point out recently, in the wake of an Alaska poll showing Trump with only a 47-42 lead, that one can easily imagine an electoral map in which Harris holds a 268-267 lead without Alaska, making the 49th state the unexpected key to the election. (This involves Trump flipping both GA and PA relative to the 2020 map, while Harris holds on to AZ, MI, NV, and WI and does not flip NC.) Intriguingly, Alaska will be using ranked choice in the presidential election for the first time this year, and there are 8 names on its ballot, including RFK Jr.

Today Trump’s attorneys asked the 11th Circuit to extend, from September 25th to October 25th, the deadline for their reply brief in the government’s appeal of Judge Cannon’s dismissal of U.S. v. Trump (Florida edition). Special Counsel Smith is not expected to oppose the request. Even with the delay, it is plausible that oral arguments will be scheduled between the election and the inauguration.