Harris is Underrated
Electoral College Bias is Exaggerated
Electoral college bias is about the most random variable in American political history. The electoral college let Lincoln win with a 40% plurality, it let Trump win with a 46%, minority vote share. There’s really no structure to this, the 1860 Republican map looks nothing like the 2016 Republican map. The 1860 map amplified the power of Northern cities, the current map blunts the electoral influence of Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. It’s all a question of groups of states aligning with one another to form a majority, so notch points are critical even if they seem an unworthy pivot for history.
The present map gives Harris more viable paths to victory. She has more optionality because a bulge in the frequency distrubution of outcomes lies just over the 270 electoral vote threshold she needs to win. This makes Harris a very modest electoral college favorite even though she is half a point behind in the likeliest tipping point state, Pennsylvania. There is a roughly 60% chance that the blue wall cracks, but Harris manages to salvage victory about 18% of the time this happens.
Because it’s hard to redo the correlation matrix, I have not added Virginia and New Hampshire, which gives Harris a modest artificial advantage. However, this doesn’t affect the bottom line by more than 1%. If you heavily penalize Harris in Texas and Florida, which have a massive number of electoral votes, basically five times as many as Virginia and New Hampshire combined, she still wins 50.9% of the time. More (and thicker) branches of the relevant decision tree get Harris to an electoral college majority than get Trump to victory.
Here’s an interesting counterfactual. Give Harris a 50% chance in every core swing state, fiat Texas and Florida to Trump, Virginia, Minnesota and New Hampshire to Harris. If Harris is even in every other state, her odds of winning would be 55%. The electoral college adds chaos to the electoral math, but it probably won’t advantage Trump by more than a point or two.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Harris has a 51% chance of winning
Printout of Main Simulation
HARRIS WON 512217 out of 1 Million times
she got exactly 270 EVs 17040 times
the blue wall holds 403246 times
Blue Wall Cracks 596754 times of which Harris salvages 108971 wins
Harris wins a southern state (GA/AZ/NC/FL/TX): 589131 times
Harris blue wall only: 16902 ; blue wall plus nevada: 26484
Harris wins PA loses GA but wins election 203385 out of 221596 times she carries pa but not ga
Wins w/ losses w/ wins w/o losses w/o
AZ 327051 26525 185166 461258
GA 303498 93395 208719 394388
FL 94596 0 417621 487783
MI 502655 151473 9562 336310
MN 509264 296801 2953 190982
NV 433741 66564 78476 421219
NC 355620 48373 156597 439410
PA 444062 18615 68155 469168
TX 101153 8 411064 487775
WI 454039 76093 58178 411690
NE-2 497827 317992 14390 169791
Printout of Core State 50/50 Simulations, Shoulder states are fiated
HARRIS WON 550387 out of 1 Million times
she got exactly 270 EVs 4975 times
the blue wall holds 318528 times
Blue Wall Cracks 681472 times of which Harris salvages 231859 wins
Harris wins a southern state (GA/AZ/NC/FL/TX): 715851 times
Harris wine the blue wall only: 1820, blue wall plus nevada: 532 times
When Harris wins Pennsylvania but loses Georgia, she wins 167694 of 190192 times.
State wins w/ losses w/ wins w/o losses w/o
AZ 446681 52864 103706 396749
GA 377052 122824 173335 326789
FL 0 0 550387 449613
MI 540808 112728 9579 336885
MN 550387 449613 0 0
NV 460382 39796 90005 409817
NC 427764 72405 122623 377208
PA 477035 23170 73352 426443
TX 0 0 550387 449613
WI 448163 51783 10222 397830
NE-2 405603 94192 144784 3554211