Paths to Victory: The Seven States That Will Decide the Next President

• Polls show a near tie between Trump and Harris as Election Day approaches, especially in swing states

• Trump leads in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, while Harris may be up slightly in Michigan and Wisconsin; Pennsylvania remains tight

• "Herding" among pollsters could be painting an inaccurate portrait of the electoral landscape

The story

Tomorrow is Election Day. For months, pollsters have been attempting to take the pulse of the American people, often leading to the same conclusion that the election is a coin-flip between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Many on the left believe Harris will win, and many on the right believe Trump will. While presidential polling was notoriously inaccurate in 2016, most managed better predictions in 2020 and 2022.

Around 50 percent of Americans have already cast their ballots. On Election Day, the other half of the electorate makes the final calls on who will take over the White House in January 2025 and which parties control the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The paths to victory

According to the RealClearPolitics average — which offers a typically reliable average of all the major polls — Trump maintains a slight lead in five of the seven major swing states: Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Harris is up in Michigan and Wisconsin.

For Trump, the path to victory is easier. He only needs to win three of the Sun Belt states that he is currently leading in (AZ, GA, and NC) and just one of the Rust Belt states (PA, WI, or MI). Trump and Harris are neck-and-neck in the Rust Belt, so it is reasonable to expect Trump to take at least one.

However, Joe Biden swept the Rust Belt in 2020, a potential sign that it is moving left. So, for Harris, her best path to victory would be to lock out those same three states.

The states to watch

Arizona: Trump is currently polling around 2-3 points above Harris. Meanwhile, Senate candidate Kari Lake (R) is running well behind her Democrat opponent, Ruben Gallego, suggesting Arizonans may be splitting their tickets.

Nevada: Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown claimed yesterday that he is running in a dead heat with his Democrat opponent, after months of lagging behind in the polls. The most recent data on the presidential race appears split — some pollsters have Trump winning the state, and some have Harris. Some analysts believe Trump has the advantage due to higher-than-average voting from Nevada’s rural counties.

Georgia: A typically Republican state that Biden managed to pry away from the GOP in 2020 appears to be shifting steadily back in Trump’s favor. Though he is up around two points on Harris, much of the polling shows him running within the margin of error, meaning Harris could still pull it off.

North Carolina: Trump is around one to three points ahead of Harris in North Carolina, still within the margin of error. In recent days, the Trump team has expressed concern about winning the state while Harris’ camp now considers it “very much in play.”

Pennsylvania: Potentially the most decisive state in the election, Pennsylvania also might be tightest race between the two candidates. In the past two weeks, neither candidate has seen larger than a two-point lead in any poll. Republicans in rural PA appear to be returning ballots at rates higher than in 2020, which could signal increased turnout for Trump.

Michigan: Kamala Harris has consistently been showing stronger signs in Michigan despite some hurdles she faces with Arab Americans. A recent CNN report showed that Harris is running pro-Palestine ads in Michigan to appease Arab voters, while showing pro-Israel ads in Pennsylvania for moderate voters. Harris will also need a high turnout from black voters in more populated areas to overcome deficits in rural Michigan.

Wisconsin: The final Rust Belt state, Wisconsin, looks similar to Michigan in its polling data, with the two candidates essentially deadlocked. In fact, the last time these two states voted for different candidates was in 1984. Expect to see the Rust Belt states voting in tandem — either all for Trump or all for Harris.

Is all the data wrong?

Highly regarded pollster Nate Silver warns that the tight polling in battleground states between Trump and Harris could be misleading due to a phenomenon called "herding," where pollsters adjust their results to align with other polling averages rather than release independent findings.

This tendency, Silver explains, creates an artificial consensus in which nearly every poll reflects a close race, but the lack of genuine outliers suggests pollsters are reluctant to publish numbers that could look "off" if they differ too much from other data.

This risk means that despite what appears to be a consistent dead heat in the data, Election Day could still reveal unexpected results if pollsters are suppressing outliers that might better represent actual voter shifts.

In 2016, swing state polls largely showed Hillary Clinton with a strong lead over Donald Trump, though he ultimately won in many of these states.

Polling inaccuracies can result from many factors beyond “herding,” such as certain demographics — like left-wing seniors — being more likely to respond to phone calls from pollsters, or even the "shy Trumper" phenomenon, where voters were not willing to admit their support for Trump to pollsters.