Trump's Electoral College Problem

Kamala has remained resilient in battlegrounds even as her national standing has slipped. It's made Trump's position a lot weaker than many may think.

Yesterday, I began my pre-debate coverage of the race with an assessment of the Kamala Harris campaign over the past month. You can read the full piece here, but in case you haven’t, here’s a quick recap. After the Vice President resolved her party’s single biggest problem in the election by virtue of not being 81 years old, she vaulted back into contention. But over the past month, her momentum has stalled at the same time that her campaign has adopted a hyper-cautious approach to campaigning and messaging. Platitude-nominated events like the DNC have so far failed to resolve outstanding concerns about her credentials and credibility, causing some voters to get skittish about her. Solving these problems shouldn’t be too challenging in theory, but they’re not going to be fixed by themselves. And until they are, Kamala simply won’t be in the kind of solid position that the rest of her party is.

This shift in momentum away from the Harris campaign has been at its most obvious at the national level, where recent high-quality polls have given her mediocre-to-concerning results. While this hasn’t yet cost her her national lead, her popular vote advantage has shrunk by enough for many to fear that she has entered a danger zone that puts her at risk of losing the electoral college despite winning more votes nationally. Such an assumption may feel safe to make in the aftermath of 2016 and 2020, but recent polling numbers in the actual must-win states have been showing something interesting—and contrary to the budding consensus that Trump is back on track to win.

Across the country’s top battlegrounds, credible polls haven’t shown Trump’s support improving all that much as the Vice President’s support has slipped nationally. Kamala has proven to be remarkably resilient in these states, which has allowed her to keep an advantage in the electoral college as she heads into her first debate against Trump. As things stand, her electoral coalition, as measured by polling, looks to be far more efficient than what Biden saw in the polls at similar points in the race—a major challenge for the Trump team that they don’t appear to be fully aware of. Here’s the current state of the map, some theories on why this may be happening, and why it may present a big long-term concern for the GOP over the next two months.

The Official Ettingermentum 2024 Electoral College Ratings: September 10th, 2024