With such a close presidential race estimated in the battlefield racesa host of factors could tip the 2024 elections. We focus on two that have the potential to… most important states to break towards Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. The first has to do with irregular voters, and the second depends on how successful the Harris campaign is in peeling away Trump’s former supporters.
To see how these scenarios might play out, we adjust specific parameters in our software Battleground Tracker Model that was trained on tens of thousands of survey responses collected during the campaign. The resulting estimates below illustrate a range of possibilities you can look forward to this week…
Scenario 1: Few voters turn out in a big way, driven by Trump-leaning men
The most swinging part of the electorate – and the most difficult to estimate in opinion polls – consists of irregular voters. We define them here as registered voters who did not cast a vote four years ago.
This group is ‘swingy’ in two ways: their choice of vote and whether they come out at all. They report being more persuasive because more of them are unsure about their decision, or at least say they might to consider the other candidate. And they are disproportionately young, without a history of voting every two to four years.
Irregular voters are also more likely to be men than women. In particular, we found that men overestimate the likelihood of success than women. Administrative data show that women are actually slightly more likely to vote than men.
Before President Biden dropped out of this summer’s race, 2020 nonvoters nationally leaned toward Trump. Since Harris became the Democratic nominee, they seemed very divided between her and Trump.
Particularly in battleground states, this group often still leans toward Trump — if his campaign manages to sway these lower-leaning voters, Trump’s vote margins in these states would improve, flipping some of Mr. Biden’s fortunes four years ago .
How many 2020 non-voters are expected to turn out this year? Well, that also depends on the state, but our estimates suggest that about one in five voters will not have voted in the previous presidential election. In 2020, this number appeared higher than those in Arizona and Nevada, and lower in Wisconsin, for example.
Let’s imagine that the Trump campaign increases this group’s turnout in all seven battleground states. Specifically, in this scenario their share of the electorate grows by five points compared to baseline estimates, for example from 20% to 25% in Pennsylvania.
In this scenario, Trump would choose Arizona, Georgia and… Pennsylvania — states that he won in 2016 but lost to Mr. Biden in 2020 — and holds North Carolina. He would lose the other battlegrounds to Harris, but ultimately gain more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. (Scroll to the bottom of this page to see state-specific estimates under different scenarios.)
Scenario 1 map: Shows 2020 abstainers and men boosting Trump
Scenario 2: Harris turns out more Trump ’20 voters, driven by Republican women
The 2024 race will feature a significant gender gapwith the Harris campaign emphasize reproductive rights and the state of American democracy. Related to this, the Harris campaign has deployed messengers such as former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to convince moderate Republicans to support Harris this year. That includes the millions of Republican Party primary voters who voted for Nikki Haley even after Trump clinched the party nomination. Most of these voters supported Trump in the 2020 general election.
Convincing supporters of the other party to switch to your side is a difficult task in an era of hardened partisanship. How many Trump 2020 voters could the Harris campaign realistically expect to flip?
A few suggestive data points:
- In our poll this year, about 1 in 10 Trump 2020 voters profile themselves as persuasive nationally and in battleground states. This means they are telling us they are not committed to supporting Trump. That’s a tough target for the Harris campaign, because some of these voters are siding with Trump and won’t actually change their minds even if they say so.
- For context, our 2020 exit polls showed that only 7% of previous Trump voters went to Biden. That dropout rate ranged from 6-7% across the four battleground states Biden won that year. That’s a more achievable goal for the campaign.
In this scenario, imagine that the Harris campaign successfully flips 7% of Trump voters in the battleground in 2020. It is a deviation from ours basic estimatesindicating both a lower attrition rate and a roughly equal number of Mr. Biden’s 2020 voters switching to Trump this year. It amounts to a best-case scenario for Harris, with Democrats earning votes through vote swings in critical states.
Under this set of assumptions, Harris would keep all the states Biden won four years ago, except Arizona, and also add North Carolina to her column. She would eventually receive more than 300 electoral votes, securing her place in history as the first female American president.
Scenario 2 map: shows Harris winning against Republicans and women
Kabir Khanna
