AI Generated Summary (I’ve been expirimentign with it):
- Kamala Harris had a tough day in the forecast despite gains in national polls.
- She leads by 3.8 points nationally but has a 47.3% chance of winning the Electoral College.
- The model adjusts for convention bounce, assuming her polls are inflated.
- Harris’s numbers may improve if she maintains her current standing.
- A concern is the lack of polls showing her ahead in Pennsylvania, a key state.
- Recent polls show Pennsylvania as a tie or slightly favoring Trump.
- Harris has a 17% chance of winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College.
- RFK’s dropout and endorsement of Trump may impact her in Rust Belt states.
- Tim Walz has had a strong rollout as Harris’s VP, but there’s speculation about Josh Shapiro.
RCP has Harris at a 1.8% favorite in its polling average. At the beginning of this month Trump was winning in these polls (granted partially because of Biden’s degraded mental state). So opinions could legitimately change.
Additionally, Kennedy is still at 4.5%, and generally 3rd parties support degrades the closer to the election it gets. It’s difficult to say where that support will degrade to. If Trump’s support falls to 1% and Trump takes 3% of that support, he’ll be ahead in the polls.
Finally, all the national polls have a margin of error between 2-3%. It’s just as possible that Harris is up by 4.8% as it is that she’s down by 3.8%.
So the chance of Harris losing the popular vote is significant.