The 2024 presidential election starts off as a toss-up in our projections. Former President Donald Trump is leading in most key battleground states, but a close margin, a slight swing, or even a poll that tilts just a little too far in favor of Republicans could lead to President Joe Biden's reelection. At this point, Biden is the more likely candidate to win. XXX Out of 1,000 simulations It's unclear how the election will play out, but Trump will win. XXX Our Simulation. in XXX simulationIf neither candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes, the election will go to the House of Representatives.
Our projections begin just a week and a half after Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a scheme to pay hush money to porn actresses during the 2016 election. Since May 30, Trump has been dropping in the polls, dropping from +1.7 to +1.0 in the national average of 538 polls as of 1:00 PM Eastern time on Monday. In our projections today, economic and political “fundamental” indicators have raised Trump's projected national popular vote share from -1.0 to +2.3 points, and we believe Biden still has room to improve. However, Trump remains behind in key battleground states, with just 1 point of vote share in Pennsylvania, the state most likely to tilt the Electoral College to either candidate, well within our uncertainty interval. With five months to go until Election Day, there is still plenty of room for swings in the polls, with the odds of either Trump or Biden winning a landslide victory of at least 350 electoral votes on November 5th showing just 3 in 10.
538's projections are based on a combination of polling and campaign “fundamentals” such as economic conditions, state partisanship, and incumbency. Our goal is not to “predict” a winner, but to estimate each candidate's chances of winning. To learn how we precisely calculate these probabilities, see our methodology.
