The FHQ+ Electoral College Map (9/5/24)

An initial projection in the 2024 Harris-Trump race for the White House

Okay. LFG as the kids would say.¹

Longtime readers of the sites in the FHQ universe will note that 1) it has been quiet around these parts of late and 2) usually by this point in a presidential race FHQ has been spitting out daily updates to its electoral college projections for weeks. Well, about that…

Under normal circumstances, I like to roll out the initial electoral college projection by the end of the second quarter. It’s after primary season. Voters are starting to pay attention. And it is at a point in the race when polling data has not accumulated enough to bog down construction of a quick baseline. Still, FHQ would be lying if I said that I was on pace to have things ready to go at the end of June this year. I wasn’t. But I was ready to tease a preview projection of just the swing states before heading out on vacation for the July 4th week.

Then the Atlanta debate happened, sending the race into limbo. The subsequent questions that surrounded President Biden’s continued candidacy also sent me back into “primary mode” as demand for expertise in the presidential nomination rules spiked at an abnormal point (and in an atypical way) on the calendar.

Anyway, during the course of July and especially after the president bowed out of the contest on July 21, FHQ made the editorial decision to wait until after Labor Day — after the conventions and after a reasonable amount of Harris-Trump survey work at the state and national level had been released — to debut the 2024 version of the electoral college projection based on a graduated weighted average of the state-level polling.

That day is today.

Before digging in, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Paul Gurian for once again allowing FHQ to use his fantastic map template during the 2024 cycle.

On to the show…