We Don't Know Who Wins, We Don't Know If It Will Be Close

There’s a lot of uncertainty right now.

The presidential race has been nearly tied for months. From March through June, Biden and Trump have been less than 2 points apart in the 538 average—mostly with Trump ahead by 1 or less, but occasionally with Biden leading by a hair. This long run of consistent polling led most analysts to assume that the presidential results would come down to the wire—just a point or two in a couple of swing states.

Then Biden had a terrible, no good, and very bad debate performance on June 27, and Trump opened up a lead, getting 3.2 points ahead by the end of July—at which point Biden dropped out. Harris closed the gap and then pulled ahead; she’s now up 2.7—a 5.9 jump in about three weeks.

A 2.7 lead is still pretty nerve-wracking; Biden won in 2020 by 4.5 points, and with Trump’s likely electoral vote advantage (smaller than in 2016, but still there), he might well sneak into office even if he loses the popular vote. Or there could be a polling error in his favor (as there was in 2020) and he could just win outright. Again, the election is close.

Or is it? 538 gives you a polling average, and that gives you a sense of what seems to be the most likely outcome. But there are also several polls where we seem to be in an election which is…well, not that close.

For example, a Republican pollster just found incumbent Nevada Senator Jackie Rosen up 12 over her Republican challenger Sam Brown. Rosen won her last election by 5 in 2018, a Democratic wave year. A 12 point lead for her suggests a catastrophic election for Republicans.

Or again, the most recent Times/Sienna poll has Harris up 4 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The 2020 election was a nail biter in part because those states were all much closer than D+4; Biden won Wisconsin by .63%, PA by just over 1, and Michigan by just under 3. If Harris actually does that much better than Biden in these states, her nationwide margin is likely to be more like +6 or +7 than 2.7. That would be a blowout which might even allow the Democrats to overcome their woeful map and hold onto the Senate.

There have been some other eye-popping results too, like Morning Consult finding Harris ahead by 11 in Michigan. These numbers seem out of whack with other more sober polls, like a USA Today/Suffolk poll putting Trump ahead by 5 in Florida. Trump won Florida by 2.4 in 2020—suggesting (like the 538 average) that Harris is today running a little behind Biden’s 2020 numbers.

So, which is right? Again, the impulse is to say, well, the average is right—we’re in a Harris +2.7 environment, and the election is going to be close. Saying it’s close also seems to capture the uncertainty; we don’t know who will win. It’s up in the air.

That feels right. But it doesn’t actually capture the full range of uncertainty. It’s probably true that the election is close.

But it’s also possible that Jackie Rosen is actually going to win by (say) 9, that Michigan is going to go for Biden by (say) 8, and that it’s effectively going to be a Dem blowout.

Or it could be a fairly narrow Democratic win. Or it could be a fairly narrow Republican win. Given polling error and where the average is, those seem like the most plausible scenarios, with a Republican wave as a less likely (though not impossible) outcome.

At the moment. Unless the polls continue to move towards Harris. Or unless Trump closes the gap again.

There’s a lot of uncertainty! Which matters in this election especially I think because defeating Trumpism by just a little is important—but is also fraught.

A close election would allow Trump and his allies to claim they didn’t really lose—and will empower Republicans to possibly create a constitutional crisis if MAGA legislatures refuse to certify results in key states.

In any scenario that isn’t a Democratic blow out, too, Republicans are likely to hold onto the Senate—Democrats at this point need to win seats in two of three of Ohio, Montana, and Florida, which is a brutal ask. And for that matter a close race could mean that Rs capture the House, which is currently at +.8 D. Harris is running ahead of congressional Democrats and could easily win while they lose. That would ensure more gridlock, and prevent Democrats from addressing the electoral weaknesses Republicans are exploiting, ensuring that we keep playing dice with our democracy in every single election.

So when people say, “it’s a close race” they’re basically positing a pretty ugly scenario even if Harris wins. And those ugly scenarios (including an outright Trump win) could happen; we shouldn’t pretend they can’t.  

But I think it’s worth just reiterating that there’s also a possible that Harris just cleans Trump’s stupid orange clock, and we’re in a much better place after 2024 than we were before.

Part of that depends on donors, volunteers, and voters—on us, in other words. Part of it depends on what happens going forward (the economy, the debate maybe, the sentence in Trump’s felony conviction, who knows what else.)

But the point is it’s not written in stone; we don’t know for sure that the election has to be close, just as we don’t know who’s going to win. Polls give you a sense of a range of options, but it’s a range. The future is hard to predict, which means, thankfully, we don’t yet know for sure that we’re going to have a Republican Senate, or a disputed election. There’s hope.