So what are Harris's chances, really?

 You know, after looking back at the 2020 map, and then looking at the 2024 map, I'm starting to get a bit nervous.Harris's 2024 map is still WORSE than Biden's 2020 map. Let's look at the two for comparison's sake. Here's my revised, more accurate, 2020 prediction map:

And here's Harris's map now:

See the differences? It's still significantly more red than it was in 2020. Biden was down by 6 compared to where he was in 2020, and Harris has recovered maybe....4-5 points of that, but here's the thing, Biden only won by like 1 point in the electoral college. Despite that 2020 map, he had almost no room for error, and he won by some of the narrowest of margins. 

And now with Harris....the race is....literally 50-50. And I guess I have to say, those are her chances. Biden 2020 was 62-38, Harris 2024 is 50-50.

But if the polls are off in Trump's direction, like they were in 2016 and 2020, Harris is completely toast. And that could happen again. That's what much of that 50% is. Heck, if Harris loses ANY support at all relative to this map in those 7 swing states, she's done. PA goes red, maybe MI/WI/NV do too. As I said, there's actually a good 39% chance that Trump sweeps all 7 swing states (percentage adjusted for polling shifts since I last discussed it).

And there's a 35% chance that Harris sweeps all 7. Really. Any outcome is possible this election, and it's scary. The last two had the dems leading all year, and then Trump comes out of nowhere and BOOM, in 2016, he wins, and in 2020, he almost wins. Maybe I'm getting democrat PTSD from this, but if he does that again, we could really be dealing with the orange moron again. We are NOT in a good place. We are in a much better place than we were back in July. Need I post that map again? I'd rather not. But yeah, we have the trend line to show the progress we've made:

So, we've improved, at least made the race competitive. But it's still very well possible that despite this, we STILL lose. 

I already see democrats asking what went wrong if that is the case. And my honest opinion? There's nothing we could've done. We did everything we could, this was just our election to use, incumbents normally win by smaller margins than they did their first term, and we did that. The fact is, the Biden years killed any enthusiasm for the democrats and the democrats werent really willing to let Harris off the leash and be her own person. She was marketed as a second Biden term, and people didn't actually want that. Inflation screwed us, we were just extremely unpopular, and yeah. Kinda happens when your party gets stuck in the mud and can't get out. Between the lack of ability to pass progressive policies and the lack of vision the dems had in the first place, they just couldn't win. But nor could they shift to becoming more progressive to get unstuck, as the voters post COVID in a high inflation environment had little to no stomach for that. Because they couldnt pass anything anyway, and after inflation all voters here is "yay policies that cause more inflation!"

It's just a really bad election year.

Really, we're giving it our all, and I admit there are some policies I wish harris would do better on, like healthcare, but even then, again, I'm not sure a decent healthcare plan would even move the needle at all. People are just that cynical and fed up with the status quo. And they seem willing to try trump again even though he's a fascist. I really don't know what to say to that. it's deeply frustrating. But this is the situation the dems dug themselves into since 2016. It really is a shame because I do believe we couldve gone in a different direction and perhaps been more successful. But yeah. We're just stuck. 

And yeah, hate to doom, but this is kind of how I feel. Right now, this is the best we can do, and we aren't winning. We're also not losing, but we aren't winning. We're just...in the fight, 50-50, narrowest rate since 2004 honestly, even narrower than 2016. Even narrower than 2004. We might see 2000 play out again with the republicans pushing legal challenges and the court deciding the president. Who knows? 

It's just...frustrating. I wish there was an answer to this problem, but there just isn't. The american people are just fed up with democrats and nothing we can do can even fix the problem right now. Replacing Biden with Harris improved things, but we're basically at the point of "this is the best we can do"...50-50. Maybe a temporary 58-42 before it flips back to 48-52 (see the trend chart). And yeah. Who knows what the outcome is? Going over the past 5 elections again makes me realize how uncertain this election cycle is and how precarious our position is right now.