Donald Trump is taking a big lead in our election model: are Kamala Harris’s best weeks behind her and where are the 27,000 voters who can decide who wins?
- The latest update to our election model shows which voters can determine the elections
- READ MORE: You can sign up for our daily newsletter on US politics here
Kamala Harris may have had her most successful weeks on the campaign trail, according to our JL Partners/DailyMail.com election model, which shows Donald Trump has built a 10-point lead.
The model processes all the latest polls, election results from the past decades and economic indicators to calculate who has the greatest chance of winning the Electoral College in November.
It still shows Harris has the best chance of winning the popular vote (her support now stands at 50.8 percent and there is a 65 percent chance she will get more votes in November).
But state-by-state numbers show that the Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are all tilting more in Trump’s favor, giving him the overall edge when it comes to capturing the White House.
That gives him a 55.2 percent chance of winning. Harris is at 44.6 percent, with a very slim chance of a tie.
The best way to understand what it all means is to imagine running the model multiple times with all the different permutations and combinations for all the different states. When all of those are run, Trump wins an average of 55.2 percent of the time.
That’s a four-point increase since Monday and nine points since the post-debate low.
Either way, it shows the race will be tight, despite the monumental events of the past two months, when President Joe Biden withdrew and was replaced by Harris and Trump survived two assassination attempts.
Callum Hunter, data scientist at JL Partners, said a lot could happen between now and election day, but the current trend is clear.
“The situation remains unfavorable for Harris,” he said.
‘Although she gained ground in September thanks to the debate and the changes in access to the ballot box, things now appear to be back to the level of early September.
‘If current trends continue (although they have only been underway for a week or so), we may see Trump take a more tangible lead in the race in the coming weeks.
‘September appears to have been Harris’ peak and trends suggest that peak has now passed.’
Vice President Kamala Harris has fallen behind former President Donald Trump in our election model. But the race is still tight and she is the favorite to win the popular vote in November.
Harris enjoyed record-breaking fundraising immediately after entering the race. And her poll numbers rose.
Earlier this month, she also defeated Trump on most counts during their debate.
But the election model suggests her lead in the popular vote will be offset by Trump’s support in a number of states that will determine the outcome.
So the model suggests that Pennsylvania has moved further in Trump’s direction. The probability of him winning the state is now 58 percent, an increase of eight percentage points from his position immediately after the debate.
Trump’s odds of winning the Pennsylvania election have increased again, now standing at about 58%, up 8 percentage points from his lowest post-debate odds of 50%.
But right now he holds a lead of less than one point of the state’s popular vote, or about 27,000 voters.
They could be the ones who ultimately decide who enters the White House in January. Because if the model is tweaked to give Pennsylvania to Trump, the former president wins the election 100 percent of the time.
Other election models show things moving in Trump’s direction after a number of positive polls.
A Quinnipiac national poll showed him leading by one point, and a New York Times/Siena poll showed him leading in the key Sun Belt states of Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.
The result is that Trump now simply has more opportunities to gain power than his rival.