The State of the Race with Two Days to Go

A run down of the polls, the early vote data, and best paths to 270.

This is it.

We are at the end. That notion is equal parts exhilarating and nauseating. The election is here, and we will know who won (hopefully) in the next few days.

Throughout this campaign — even when Joe Biden was the nominee — we have been looking at the electoral map to see the best path to 270. In the Biden era, the map was very scary. His only path was winning the Blue Wall states; and after the debate, Trump put into play typically safe Democratic states like New Mexico, Minnesota, and Virginia. When Harris became the nominee, she brought all of the six battleground states from 2020 back into play, even making North Carolina competitive.

But where are we right now as we head into the final days? Are there any clues from the latest polls or early vote data about Harris’s best path to 270?

Current State of Play in the Polling

As of Saturday, according to the New York Times polling average, all seven battleground states are within the margin of error with narrow Harris leads in Wisconsin and Michigan and narrow Trump leads in the rest of the states.

The polling averages have moved in Trump’s direction. Some of this movement is the product of a flood of GOP polls in the last few weeks. However, there have been a series of good polls for Harris in these states over the last few days. Momentum for Harris is rising, particularly in the Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Nate Silver’s model shows the movement by state over the last week: