US presidential election remains a toss-up, and a guide to US election day in Australia

The United States presidential election will be held Tuesday, with results coming in from Wednesday morning AEDT. I have a guide to Wednesday below that includes when polls in the key states close and other information.

In analyst Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls, Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump by 48.5–47.8, a gain for Trump since last Thursday, when Harris led by 48.6–47.5. Harris’ national lead peaked on October 2, when she led by 49.4–45.9.

The US president isn’t elected by the national popular vote, but by the Electoral College, in which each state receives electoral votes equal to its federal House seats (population based) and senators (always two). Almost all states award their electoral votes as winner-takes-all, and it takes 270 electoral votes to win (out of 538 total).

Relative to the national popular vote, the Electoral College is biased to Trump, with Harris needing at least a two-point popular vote win to be the narrow Electoral College favourite in Silver’s model.

Trump leads by 0.4 points in both Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Nevada (six). He leads by over one point in North Carolina (16) and Georgia (16), and by 2.6 points in Arizona (11). Harris leads by about one point in Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (ten).

If the current polls are exactly right, Trump wins the Electoral College by 287–251. But either Harris or Trump could outperform their polls and win easily.

In Silver’s model, Trump has a 53% chance to win the Electoral College, slightly down from 54% on Thursday. There’s a 28% chance that Harris wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College. The FiveThirtyEight forecast gives Trump a 53% win probability.

Silver is aggregating state polls to produce a popular vote forecast, and this gives Harris a 50.4–48.4 popular vote margin, better for Harris than her 0.7-point lead in national polls.

Silver said the US pollsters are “herding”, particularly in the key states. This means individual polls are not showing enough variation in their results. If the polls are wrong in these states, herding would be a cause.

The highly rated Selzer poll had a shock result, giving Harris a three-point lead in Iowa (six electoral votes), a state Trump won by eight points in 2020. However, an Emerson Iowa poll gave Trump a nine-point lead. At least Selzer isn’t herding!

If Harris loses, a big cause will be the unpopularity of Joe Biden. If Trump loses, I believe his biggest mistake will be agreeing to the June 27 debate with Biden. Biden’s woeful performance persuaded senior Democrats to pressure him into withdrawing.

Early voting and economic data

As at Friday, over 70 million Americans had voted early (44% of total 2020 turnout). Many states give data on their early vote, such as the gender composition or the party registration of voters in states that have registration by party. But Silver said on Thursday that analysts shouldn’t use early vote data as an alternative to the polls.

Many people will vote on election day, so the composition of the current early vote may be a skewed representation of the final electorate. Also, we don’t know who early voters voted for. Even in states with party registration, people can register as Other, and Other voters make up a large share of the vote.

In economic data, US GDP increased 2.7% at an annualised rate in the September quarter (0.7% in quarter on quarter terms). GDP has increased modestly in every quarter since September 2022. In September, the personal savings rate dropped 0.2% since August to 4.6%.

Just 12,000 jobs were added in October. While the unemployment rate remained unchanged from September at 4.1%, the employment population ratio (the share of eligible Americans employed) dropped 0.2% to 60.0%. The survey fieldwork may have been affected by Hurricane Milton.

The Silver economic index is at +0.19, indicating an economy just above average. The economy is a key reason why Trump could win.

Election day guide for Wednesday AEDT

All times in this section are Wednesday AEDT. US media will often call uncompetitive states for a candidate once all polls in that state are closed, without any votes being counted. Some states are split across time zones, and in this case the part in the western time zone will close an hour after the eastern zone part.

Early and postal votes are expected to lean to Harris, while election day votes are expected to lean to Trump. So if the early vote is counted first, the state is likely to appear better for Harris than the final result, and the reverse if the election day vote is counted first.

The Green Papers has a complete list of poll closing times and FiveThirtyEight has details on how each state counts its votes. I will concentrate on the seven key states.

At 10am, the first polls close in the eastern time zones of Kentucky and Indiana. These states are both expected to be Trump blowout wins.

At 11am, polls close in Georgia. Early votes will be reported by 12pm, followed by the election day vote. Initial results will probably skew to Harris.

At 11:30am, polls close in North Carolina. The early vote will be counted first, so the initial results are likely to be relatively good for Harris.

At 12pm, polls close in Pennsylvania and the large majority of Michigan. Pennsylvania will count their election day votes first, which should be relatively good for Trump. Michigan will count its postal votes with election day votes.

At 1pm, polls close in Wisconsin, Arizona and the remaining small part of Michigan. In Wisconsin, election day votes will be counted first, with postals not released until late. An hour after polls close, Arizona will release its early vote, which should be relatively good for Harris. Counting of election day votes will continue until the evening AEDT, with more counting in the following days.

At 2pm, polls close in Nevada. The early vote will be counted first. Results can’t be reported until all voters in line have voted, which will probably be hours after the official close of polls. There will also be late postals to count.

At 3pm, polls close in the Pacific states of California (54 electoral votes), Washington (12) and Oregon (eight), all expected to be easy wins for Harris. If Harris is doing unexpectedly well in the key states, these three may put her over the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

At 5pm, the final polls close in Alaska’s western time zone.

We may know who has won the Electoral College and therefore the presidency by Wednesday afternoon, but counting will continue until well into that evening AEDT. If it’s close, it may take a few more days to resolve the Electoral College.

Some states, including the populous Democratic strongholds of California and New York, take weeks to count all their votes. So it won’t be until early December that we know the national popular vote totals.