Donald Trump’s Chances of Winning Popular Vote, According to Odds, Polls

With just a month remaining until the election, polls show that Kamala Harris is winning the popular vote by a large margin.
In 36 years, only one Republican nominee has won the popular vote, when George Bush won by 2 points.
Polls currently show that Trump is not likely to break that trend, but with the former president gaining in the polls, it is not impossible that he still might follow in Bush’s footsteps.
No poll aggregators show that Trump is in the lead. Nate Silver’s model shows that he has a 24 percent chance of winning the popular vote to Harris’ 76 percent, with the pollster predicting that the former president will capture 48 percent of the vote, compared to Harris’ 51 percent. That is down from the beginning of this week when Harris’ electoral college probability stood at 75 percent while Trump’s stood at 25 percent.
Meanwhile, online betting platform Polymarket shows that Trump’s chances of winning the popular vote have shot up from 27 percent on October 13 to 36 percent, while Harris’ have declined from 71 percent to 63 percent.
It comes amid a positive month for Trump in the polls. A new Fox News poll, conducted between October 11 and 14 among 1,110 registered voters and 870 likely voters, showed that Trump is leading Harris by 2 points among registered and likely voters, on 50 percent to her 48 percent, which falls within the poll’s margin of error, a 4-point swing from when Harris was leading Trump by 2 points a month ago.
Additionally. the latest ActiVote poll, conducted from October 3-8, showed Donald Trump holding a 1.2-point lead nationwide with a 3 percent margin of error. That came after a September poll from ActiVote had Kamala Harris ahead by 5.4 points.
Trump has also seen positive signs in the swing states. RealClearPolitics’ poll tracker last week showed that Michigan had flipped in favor of Trump for the first time since July 29. Nevada and Pennsylvania have also gone Republican.
And in FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker, Trump’s vote share has increased in Arizona, from 1.1 points at the beginning of the month to 1.6 points, as well as in Georgia, from 1.1 points to 1.7 points. Harris’ vote share has decreased marginally in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In North Carolina, Trump’s vote share has decreased marginally from 0.7 points to 0.5 points.
Meanwhile, pollster Nate Silver’s forecast showed last week that 19 states had shifted in the former president’s favor.
Nonetheless, polls remain tight, especially in key swing states where the candidates are separated by just 1 or 2 points. On Wednesday, Silver’s forecast revealed that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris now have nearly identical chances of winning in November, with Harris at 50.1 percent and Trump at 49.7 percent. This shift follows a 6-point drop in Harris’ odds of victory since late September, as Trump gains momentum in 19 states, according to Silver’s analysis.
“The forecast is razor-thin,” Silver noted. “With recent polls showing a dead heat in Midwestern battlegrounds, it’s now essentially a 50/50 race.”
FiveThirtyEight’s tracker shows that Harris is currently 2.4 points ahead of Trump nationally, while Silver’s tracker shows that she is 2.8 points ahead.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.
Correction 10/21/24, 2:27 a.m. ET: This article was corrected to state that Polymarket lists Donald Trump’s chances of winning the popular vote at 36 percent, not the Electoral College.