Friday, October 04, 2024

The Razor's Edge


 Well, it’s gotten even closer.

For those who hoped the Presidential race would be less of a nail-biter than it was projected to be a week ago, those wishes did not materialize.

When I crunched the numbers a week ago, it looked like the margin of victory separating the two candidates in the all-important seven swing states would be about 440,000 votes out of the 162 million expected to be cast nationally.

That was 0.0027.

As of this morning, I calculate the number to be 368,000 votes or only 0.0023. That is just under one-quarter of one percent.

While it’s hard to believe that the electorate could be that evenly divided, math doesn’t lie.

Here’s how the seven swing states look to end up with the margin of votes in parenthesis:

Arizona (Trump +45,800)

Georgia (Trump +67,600)

Michigan (Harris +92,200)

Nevada (Harris +14,600)

North Carolina (Trump +45,900)

Pennsylvania (Harris +43,300)

Wisconsin (Harris +58,300)

If we consider the swing states as a bloc, the math becomes even more ridiculous. These states represent just under 20 percent of the voting population nationally. Inside that bloc, Harris leads Trump by 49,100 votes or a minuscule 0.0003 percent of the national electorate. That’s smaller than the crescent of your little toenail when you trim your nails.

If these projections hold, Harris will win in the Electoral College by a margin of 276-262. Of course when it comes to the popular vote, she is headed for a mini-landslide victory of over 4.2 million votes.

(Note on methodology: I took the vote totals in each state in 2020, increased them by four percent to account for population growth and then used 538’s polls as of this morning to calculate the number of votes in each state,)

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