2024 Election Odds: Will Kamala Harris or Donald Trump Win Pennsylvania? Ignore Bad Polling
Pennsylvania is always a key swing state, and this election is no different. The Keystone State is probably the most important state of this election, with both sides needing to win it. Wagering on election odds in the United States is not legal; however, DraftKings Sportsbook in Ontario, Canada, has 2024 election odds to win Pennsylvania. That allows us to dig into the state of this race between Kamala Harris and the Democrats vs. Donald Trump and the Republicans.
With the election only two and a half weeks away, make sure to check out our Presidential election odds to track how the market has fluctuated over the course of this entire election cycle.
2024 Election Odds: To Win Pennsylvania Electoral College Votes
Party | Odds | Implied Probability |
Democrats | +100 | 50% |
Republican | -125 | 53% |
Polling In Pennsylvania
Kamala Harris holds a narrow lead in the average of Pennsylvania polls, but there’s no real reason to think it’s as close as it is.
Nate Silver’s average has Harris +0.5, but that includes a Rasmussen poll (which gives the Trump campaign advance warning of their data), an Insider Advantage poll (which had Trump and Dr. Oz both winning the state), and a TIPP poll (a right-wing source whose likely voter screen just so happened to exclude 90% of their respondents from the city of Philadelphia).
Donald Trump’s own internal polling only had Republicans up one in the state, a very bad result for internal polling. A leaked National Republican Senate Committee memo had Harris +1 in PA.
The vast majority of the quality public polling is between a tie and Harris by 4. The polling is pretty clear and hard to argue.
Other than Emerson, the last high-quality, nonpartisan pollster to predict Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania was a September Fox poll. Unless you cherry-pick the right-wing pollsters, there is no case for Trump enthusiasm or momentum here.
2022 Redux?
In 2022, right-wing pollsters led to a surge in GOP optimism and statistical modeling. The problem was that those polls—which had been less bad than some other polls in 2020—were just plain wrong. Fetterman won by 5% in a race that was called by midnight. He did this even after all the handwringing of those last 10 days and after all the consternation that Fetterman would actually let Dr. Oz into the Senate.
The GOP-aligned pollsters are doing the same thing here, either by flooding the zone with nonsense (Insider Advantage, Patriot Polling, Rasmussen, Trafalgar) or by hacking a D+4 Registered Voters screen to bits by nuking Philly off the map (TIPP).
These are not serious efforts to assess the public mood but to influence it and give Donald Trump a bit of good news.
It’s unserious polling.
Dear Josh (Shapiro)
Harris’s decision not to pick Josh Shapiro as her running mate is criticized every time there’s a bad poll. If Harris loses PA after this election, one of the most likely narratives will be that she should have picked Shapiro.
But it’s an overblown concern.
First, the polls in Wisconsin have tightened somewhat (as they were always going to), so there are more plausible Democratic loss combinations where she wins Pennsylvania even with Tim Walz and still loses the country.
Secondly, Shapiro would arguably hurt a bit in Michigan, where the combination of Arab Americans and lots of college students means Shapiro could have been a bit of a poisoned chalice for some. Having him as the nominee would have raised the salience of Israel-Gaza, which would hurt Harris.
But the main reason why Shapiro wouldn’t have worked is simple – he’s not built to be a No. 2.
He’s ambitious and arrogant and has no problem showing either of those facts. He’s very explicit about his ambitions, and every move he makes is viewed not as the move of a loyal running mate but as someone lining themselves up for 2028 or 2032. Days that have been focused on Donald Trump’s unsuitability or on Harris’s ideas would have been vacuumed up into whether Shapiro was being a sufficient team player or whatever other nonsense.
And, frankly, Kamala’s polling is good anyway.
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Early Vote
There are not many states where the early vote can tell us much, but Pennsylvania is one. Not nearly enough votes have been counted yet, but what we can glean from the results is that Democrats are enthusiastic about voting for Harris.
It’s unclear whether they’ll bank enough votes in the mail ballot period to feel confident on election day, but the early returns are good for Democrats in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Presidential Odds Prospects
Kamala should win the state. It is highly unlikely that Trump is really winning a state where a Fabrizio/McLaughlin internal only has him up one and an NRSC internal has him down 1.
No amount of TIPP likely voter screen hackery can change the fact that Harris is winning.
Trump still has a chance, and there’s no real case to dismiss the chance of a big polling miss again. That said, there’s a difference between having a chance and having a big one.
Trump is the clear underdog in Pennsylvania. Harris should win the state. There’s intrigue left, but not that much.
Best of luck with 2024 election odds!