Welcome back to the Partisan-Gravity Presidential Forecast model. If you missed it, you can catch up on the models methodology here and yesterday’s update here.
Today’s model update comes just hours after the Trump vs. Harris Presidential Debate in Philadelphia, PA. As we covered here at Partisan-Gravity, the debate featured something of a lopsided victory for Harris as she held the initiative throughout and managed to bait Trump into disastrous responses. From questioning his rally size to somehow getting him to endorse the racist conspiracy surrounding immigrants eating peoples’ pets, she managed to keep Trump focused on the things that voters typically dislike rather than questions around her own platform.
THE MODEL DOESN’T WATCH DEBATES
Even if the debate fundamentally affected the race, the model wouldn’t know that yet. There has been no polling of voters exclusively post-debate. There simply hasn’t been enough time for that yet. We’ll probably begin getting some better data next week, if we’re lucky.
Partisan-Gravity’s forecast has made assumptions (or priors, if you will) about race fundamentals before. Specifically, the model gives a small boost to each candidate in the 3 weeks post-convention. This seems to have been something real – especially for Harris, even if this bounce in the polls was not just attributed to her convention.
It’s possible we’ll see that for the debate, but really, we don’t know. Because of this, we’re not adding any new priors in just yet. If it seem as though her polls improve in the next two-week or so period, we may add a bounce adjustment in that hinges on the assumption that said bounce will disappear eventually.
WHERE THE RACE STANDS TODAY
With 10,000 simulations:
HARRIS WINS 5607(~56%)
TRUMP WINS 4307(~43%)
NO WINNER 86 (<1%)
Harris’ chances of winning today are a couple of points lower than they were yesterday. A lot of this is random noise. Remember, there are 10,000 new simulations each day. There can be minor fluctuations even if nothing big has changed.
If you’re curious, you can examine today’s electoral vote margins (on the left) and compare them to yesterday’s (on the right). There was some minor leftward movement indicating Trump’s some 200 greater victories out of 10,000 today versus yesterday.
That said, there have been a few updates: new polls coming in and old ones falling out.
Though there are no state rating changes (Toss-up > Lean > Likely > Safe), Harris is just .002% away from turning Nevada into a “Lean” Harris state.
Moreover, today’s model run kept Harris just above 50% in North Carolina. She still retains “Lean” Harris status in Pennsylvania too.
Even if she were to lose Pennsylvania, which could be a disaster for her campaign, these changes in her favor in North Carolina and Nevada could potentially provide her an alternate route to victory were this to take place.
TODAY’S WEIGHTED POLLING AVERAGE
We’re going to start keeping track of our weighted polling averages for Harris and Trump to give you a better idea of the national environment as weighted and incorporated into our model. Today’s weighted polling average (national) shows the following:
Harris: 48.27%
Trump: 45.74%
This means that Harris has about a 2.54% lead in the national environment as of today, September 11. We’ll track how this changes from now until the election.
One response to “2024 Presidential Forecast Update: September 11”
[…] We have still barely seen any data come out since the debate. That makes sense. As we stated in our update yesterday, it will take days, or a couple of weeks even, to get some solid polling […]