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The presidential race remains too close to call, likely coming down once again to the Rust Belt trio of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
But the results so far suggest former President Donald Trump improved his performance in much of the country relative to 2020, and that if Vice President Kamala Harris still manages to win, it would be by an extremely narrow margin.
The two swing states called by a major news outlet as of early Wednesday are North Carolina and Georgia, both of which were won by Trump. Harris likely can’t count on Arizona, the swing state where she’d polled the worst, though it will take some time to count the votes there.
If Georgia and Arizona indeed fall to Trump — and keep in mind they haven’t been called yet, but he looks formidable there — Harris’s path to victory depends on winning all three of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If she loses just one in this scenario, it’s over for her. (The other remaining swing state, Nevada, will be very slow in counting, but it would be too small to make much of a difference in the Electoral College.)
All three of those Rust Belt states are still close. Trump leads the current count in all three, though many uncounted votes remain from Democratic-leaning areas.
But notably, outside the swing states, Trump is on track to do significantly better than he did in 2020, so a Harris win scenario depends on the Rust Belt defying an apparent nationwide shift in Trump’s favor.
For instance, Biden won Virginia by 10. As of late Tuesday, with more than 80 percent of votes in the state counted, Harris led Trump by a mere 1.7 percentage points. That margin is sure to expand when more Democratic areas count, but per the New York Times’s forecast of the uncounted vote, she’ll likely end up with somewhere around a 5-point win, significantly worse than Biden.
Similar dynamics are at play in many other states, and Trump utterly romped in Florida, winning it by about 13 percentage points. (In 2020, Trump won Florida by a little over 3 percentage points.)
Indeed, it seems quite possible that Trump could win the national popular vote. It will take some time to determine that, as it would depend on the final margin in slow-counting states like California.
But what really matters is how the Rust Belt states end up, and we’re still waiting to learn that.
Update, November 6, at 1:07 am ET: This piece, originally published on the evening of November 5, was updated to include Georgia being called for Trump.
