Bronze

 

Pennsylvania may be a problem for Harris

The Electoral College/popular vote gap is increasing in post-DNC data.

...Kamala Harris had one of her worst days in some time in our forecast on Thursday despite gaining in our national polling average. 

 Harris is ahead by 3.8 points in our national poll tracker — up from 2.3 points the day before the Democratic Convention began — which does suggest some sort of convention bounce. However, she’s fallen to a 47.3 percent chance of winning the Electoral College versus 52.4 percent for Donald Trump.

...

There’s another, longer-term concern for Harris, though: it’s been a while since we’ve seen a poll showing her ahead in Pennsylvania, which is the tipping-point state more than a third of time in our model. Today, in fact, we added one post-DNC poll showing Pennsylvania as a tie, and another (conducted during the DNC) showing either a tie or Trump +1, depending on what version you prefer.

The model puts a lot of weight on this recent data because of all the changes in the race. And you can see why it thinks this is a problem for her: if she’s only tied in Pennsylvania now, during what should be one of her stronger polling periods, that implies being a slight underdog in November.

Harris has had weak numbers in Pennsylvania recently

The 2024 Pennsylvania presidential general election polls in our model and how influential they are

Now, all of this could change quickly with one or two high-quality polls showing Harris ahead in the Keystone State. The model is relying more heavily than I’d prefer on the Emerson College poll as it’s the only fully post-DNC/RFK data point — although note, again, that the immediate pre-DNC polls hadn’t been great for Harris in Pennsylvania either.

...If she won the popular vote nationally by between 1 and 2 points, for instance, the model estimates that she’d still be a 70/30 underdog in the Electoral College.

Okay, well, that bottom line hypothetical, I reject. I mean, yes, I agree that if she wins the pop vote by 1%-2% then yes, of course, the odds are great that she would lose in the EC, duh. My point of disagreement, my point of agreement with Stuart Stevens, is that the election in the pop vote is not going to be nearly that tight. It's going to be greater than Biden's margin and that was 4.4%!

I entirely agree with Bronze that Kamala has a Pa. problem. And the commonwealth is, well The Keystone.