The GOPâ€s shrinking electoral college edge

Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest moments in the 2024 election — and where weâ€re open to changing our assumptions (and you should be, too).

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The big moment

It pains me to say this as someone who relies on polls, defends them and, yes, even loves them. But I have to admit it: Polls of the 2024 presidential race have gotten, well, a little boring.

The race is very close, itâ€s been very close, and it will apparently continue to be very close right through Nov. 5. Things have barely budged since Vice President Kamala Harrisâ€s initial surge. The vast majority of national and swing-state polls are within the margin of error, meaning we just donâ€t really know whoâ€s ahead.

But sometimes a poll smacks you across the face, and thatâ€s certainly the case with a new Fox News poll.

The survey taken from Friday through Monday shows former president Donald Trump leading nationally by two points, well within the margin of error. But as more than a few Democrats on social media noted, it shows something very different in the seven key swing states: Harris leading by six points.

We really should not oversell this one poll, for reasons Iâ€ll get to. But it does cast a spotlight on a very live issue in the 2024 campaign:

Could Republicans†electoral college advantage be fading?

It sure looks as though it might be — despite Harrisâ€s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), recently (briefly) calling for a national popular vote.

That Trump benefits from the electoral college has long been an article of faith. He, after all, was elected in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by more than two points. Trump then in 2020 lost the popular vote by more than four points, but lost the “tipping-point� state — Pennsylvania — by less than a point. (The tipping-point state is basically the state in the middle of the results of all 50 states that gives the winner their 270th electoral vote.)

As The Washington Postâ€s Lenny Bronner noted a couple months back, Republicans benefited from a nearly three-point electoral college bias in 2016 and a nearly four-point one in 2020 — the largest such advantages since the World War II era. That bias measures the difference between the winnerâ€s margins in the popular vote and the tipping-point state.

But as the above chart makes clear, these things are subject to change. Republicans havenâ€t always had the edge. And ahead of 2016, a lot of us (sheepishly raising my hand here) were talking about how it was the Democrats who appeared primed to benefit.

Bronner noted this indeed appeared to be changing in 2024. But where does it stand?

The first thing to note is that Foxâ€s poll isnâ€t a great measure. The poll isnâ€t made up of individual surveys from the swing states, but a subsample of voters across them — with a large margin of error. The idea that Harris benefits from something like an eight-point electoral college bias is highly implausible. As the chart above shows, it would be without modern precedent.

The better measure, then, is using polls with larger sample sizes. So letâ€s use those.

When Bronner wrote his piece in early August, he noted that Trump was running just one point better in what appeared to be the tipping-point state (Michigan) than he was nationally. So that was a one-point electoral college bias in Trumpâ€s favor, at least at that point. (The tipping-point state is not set in stone.)

When the New York Times ran its own numbers last month, the pro-Trump electoral college bias was just 0.7 points.

Today, it looks as though it might be even less of a Trump advantage — if itâ€s one at all.

Itâ€s not at all clear what the tipping-point state might be, because all of the swing states are so close. But right now The Postâ€s polling average shows itâ€s either Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Winning all three would deliver the 270 electoral votes Harris needs, and she leads by about two points in each of them. Thatâ€s virtually the same as her two-point edge in national polls.

So itâ€s looking as though electoral college bias could be, more or less, a wash.

Why might the electoral college edge be narrowing for Republicans? Bronner pointed to Democrats appearing to bank fewer votes in large states, which pulled down their share of the popular vote but didnâ€t really impact the electoral college. The Timesâ€s Nate Cohn similarly noted that Trump seemed to be doing better than he previously had in noncompetitive states where Republicans made some of their bigger gains in the 2022 midterm elections.

Whatever the case, the evidence suggests the electoral college isnâ€t primed to bite Democrats as hard as it has previously in the Trump era.

That doesnâ€t mean it wonâ€t matter; in a very close race like this one, even a small electoral college bias could mean the popular-vote loser is elected for the third time since 2000 (remember Bush v. Gore?). But at least for now, Democrats†popular-vote promoters such as Walz donâ€t seem to have quite as much to fear from the electoral college.

Another moment you may have missed

Wednesday brought some of the highest-profile interviews to date in the 2024 election, including Harrisâ€s foray onto Fox Newsâ€s airwaves and a pair of town halls featuring Trump — on both Fox and on Univision.

A few reflections, especially on Harrisâ€s high-profile Fox interview:

• Harris seems to perform better in such combative interviews, and that was certainly the case in her Fox News interview — one that in many ways resembled a debate between her and host Bret Baier.
• Harris made a point to say, “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Bidenâ€s presidencyâ€� — adjusting her wayward answer on “The Viewâ€� last week in which she struggled to enunciate something she would have done differently than Biden.
• A key moment for her was when Baier seemed to try to bait her into attacking Trumpâ€s supporters — and she didnâ€t take the bait. Baier noted that nearly half of Americans support a candidate that Harris has labeled so bad and dangerous. He asked whether she contended those people were “stupid.â€� “Oh, God, I would never say that about the American people,â€� Harris responded. Harris then accurately noted that Trumpâ€s attacks on her own base are far more pitched than what she says about his.
• On that same subject, in perhaps the most viral clip, she effectively accused Fox of whitewashing Trumpâ€s recent comments about using the military against “radical left lunaticsâ€� and the “enemy within.â€�
• Trump in his Fox town hall didnâ€t exactly back off the idea that his comment was geared toward Democrats, despite days of his allies trying to suggest that wasnâ€t what he meant. He lumped the Pelosis in with the “enemy within,â€� after previously citing Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Republicans now get to try to account for this again.

A momentous quote

“There were no guns down there [on Jan. 6, 2021]. We didnâ€t have guns. The others had guns, but we didnâ€t have guns.â€�

— Trump at a Univision town hall Wednesday night in Doral, Fla.

This quote is the most directly that Trump has tied himself to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists — people his allies and lawyers initially strained to distance him from in early 2021.

Itâ€s the culmination of a long-standing effort from Trump to downplay the events of Jan. 6 and even pitch them as something to be celebrated — despite the American peopleâ€s strong disagreement with that. (Also, there were guns and many other weapons on Jan. 6.)

Trump momentarily seemed to refer to the rioters as “weâ€� during last monthâ€s presidential debate, before quickly changing course and calling them “this group of people.â€�

Take a moment to read:

• “Panel formed after Trump rally shooting calls for Secret Service shake-upâ€� (Washington Post)
• “Trump backers are more primed to doubt the election than they were in 2020â€� (Washington Post)
• “Massive influx of shadowy get-out-the-vote spending floods swing statesâ€� (Washington Post)
• “McConnell called Trump ‘stupid,†a ‘despicable human being,†new book saysâ€� (Washington Post)
• “Inside the Secretive $700 Million Ad-Testing Factory for Kamala Harrisâ€� (New York Times)
• “‘Now I like himâ€: Some Black voters in Georgia see Trump as a real optionâ€� (Politico)
• “Mike Pence is haunting this electionâ€� (Atlantic)