In not-breaking news, the 2024 race for the White House appears very close.Tellingly, 538’s latest presidential election forecast gives Vice President Kamala Harris the narrowest of advantages over former President Donald Trump — she wins in 57 in 100 simulations, making it practically a coin-flip race.
To that point, the most critical swing states are all on a knife’s edge in the polls: Based on our latest state polling averages, Harris leads by around 1 to 2 points in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Trump holds roughly a 1-point edge in Arizona and Georgia, while North Carolina is essentially tied.This group of battlegrounds is very likely to provide us with the eventual “tipping-point” state in the 2024 presidential election.If we line up each state (and the congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska) by how large the margin of victory is for the winner of that state — from most Democratic to most Republican, or vice versa — the tipping point is the contest that hands the Electoral College winner the clinching 270th electoral vote.
That mark represents an outright majority of today’s 538 total electoral votes, which is necessary for someone to win the presidential election.Of course, each presidential election has a tipping point, regardless of whether it’s a landslide, in which the tipping point is largely academic, or a nail-biter, in which we’re closely monitoring that state as a potential decider of the outcome — as could well be the case this year.Looking at 538’s forecast, the most likely tipping-point state across all scenarios for the 2024 election is Pennsylvania.In 18 out of 100 cases, the Keystone State provides the winning electoral votes for either Harris or Trump.* The next-most likely tipping points are North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia and Florida, each of which have around a 1 in 10 shot of filling that role.
Beyond them, the remaining scenarios mostly involve Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas, Nevada and Minne...