The Popular Vote Cushion Harris Needs for Electoral Win: What Analysts Say

With polling showing a tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, experts told Newsweek that simply getting more votes from core Democratic supporters in blue states will not be enough for the Democratic nominee to beat her rival.
Harris has frequently led Trump in polling nationally, but only by a small margin, which could mean problems when it comes to securing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.
“To feel truly safe in the Electoral College, she might not have to win by as much as Biden did in 2020, which was four-and-a-half points, but a 3-4 point range would be a ballpark,” John Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told Newsweek on Tuesday.
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Based on voter turnout in 2020 of around 159 million people, a 3-point lead for Harris could mean an estimated difference of around 4.7 million. A 4-point lead would translate to an estimated 6.3 million.
However, with the Electoral College in play, what matters is where these votes are cast and how they translate to those all-important electors.
While the Democrats could do well in stronghold states like New York, California and Massachusetts, it will be key swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan where Harris will need to win over voters to sway the Electoral College.
Coleman said that the Electoral College naturally favors the Republican Party, so those Democratic strongholds do not necessarily matter as much, something The Liberal Patriot political analyst Michael Baharaeen agreed with.
“The Democrat coalition is sort of inefficiently distributed in a handful of states that are always going to vote for them. It is not distributed as much in the swing states that are going to decide the election,” Baharaeen told Newsweek.
The analyst pointed to the past two elections. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes, but it was where those votes fell that mattered, and Trump won in the states he needed for those Electoral College votes.
When Trump ran again in 2020, Joe Biden beat him by over 7 million, but the votes of around 400,000 mattered in deciding the election.
In 2024, polling has shown the two candidates neck and neck, but sometimes with only a few points between them.
In the swing state of North Carolina, a poll released Tuesday showed Harris with a 3-point lead over Trump, while in Arizona, the two have switched back and forth for weeks.
“I think this is some of the closest polling we have seen nationally and in the course swing states a long time where it’s been this close for months basically,” Baharaeen said.
“So, [for] Harris, there is a high likelihood that if she does not win the core blue wall states—that’s Michigan (15 votes), Pennsylvania (19 votes), Wisconsin (10 votes)—then she does not win the presidency,” he explained.
“At that point, she just needs one of the remaining swing states basically to get her over the 270 electoral votes threshold.”
Those states are Arizona (11 votes) and North Carolina (16 votes), along with Georgia (16 votes) and Nevada (6 votes), all of which have a more diverse voting population that could be key to Harris’ success.
Coleman said there was evidence that the Harris campaign was well aware of the need to target these states.
“I’m in Virginia, which is not a swing state, and my parents live in North Carolina, which is,” he said. “They’re being bombarded with ads and mailers and ‘get out to vote’ volunteers knocking on their door.”
Coleman added that Florida, which was a key swing state for many years, had essentially been “forgotten” by Democrats despite its 30 Electoral College votes.
Baharaeen said suburban voters in these areas, particularly the non-college-educated demographic, could be essential for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
He said Harris’s challenge now is to clarify her policies and show that she is not necessarily as left-leaning a liberal as the Trump campaign has made her out to be.
“She’s got to tell her story a little more and she’s got to outline a clear agenda of what her presidency is going to look like,” Baharaeen added.
Harris will have the chance to do that in Philadelphia on Tuesday night as she debates Trump at 9 p.m. ET.