Sabato’s Crystal Ball

In the few weeks that Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as Democrats’ standard bearer, she has “reset” the electoral map to some degree, as she has polled better than President Biden was performing before he ended his campaign.

Next week, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to announce her running mate, with the leading contenders for the job being Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). Research suggets that, on average, recent VP candidates have provided a bit of a home state boost for their tickets, if only a slight one.

As Kamala Harris takes over as the likely Democratic nominee, our Electoral College ratings remain the same, at least for the short term.

While public polling has not necessarily shifted dramatically in the three weeks since the first debate, the numbers have generally gotten worse for President Biden, and Democrats are obviously concerned about their own bleak internal numbers, many of which have been surfacing publicly. Applying the current polling situation to the electoral map paints a frightening picture for Democrats.

Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate was unusual in some important ways, both in terms of timing and in terms of Vance’s relative lack of high-level officeholding experience.

President Biden’s dud debate performance was so bad that it has forced us to reassess some of our assumptions about the race. Michigan and Minnesota move to more competitive categories in our ratings, the second time in less than a month that we’ve downgraded Democrats (and upgraded Republicans) in our Electoral College ratings.

Despite an overall job approval rating hovering around just 40% in polling averages, President Biden retains a path to victory. This is because of his unusual competitiveness among voters who just “somewhat” disapprove of his job performance, a group where Democrats performed relatively strongly in 2022 and where polling shows Biden holding up reasonably well in 2024.

We are making six Electoral College rating changes this week, all in favor of Republicans. However, we don’t really see a clear favorite in a presidential race with many confounding factors.

Who the public believes is going to win the presidential race can sometimes help predict the election. Right now, the public is more confident in a Trump victory, in part because of Republicans being more confident in Trump's chances than Democrats are in Biden's.

Using data from Dave Redistricting App, we are tracking how every district leaned, compared to the nation as a whole, in presidential elections since 2008.