If the polls are anything to go by, the 2024 presidential election is primed to be a very close contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
As voting closes on Tuesday, November 5, and the results start coming in, there will be clues among the counts as to how things may pan out overall.
How key counties and states and the different demographics within them have voted will offer tantalizing signals of who will emerge as president.
So Newsweek asked those who would know—pollsters and strategists—what they will be looking out for on election night. Here’s what they said.
Kathleen Frankovic, Consultant, YouGov
First of all, an enormous share (I would say a third or more) has already been cast. The question is when will those votes be counted and released?
Mail absentee ballots are often the last to get counted—states do not allow that to happen until election day itself. But the in-person early vote may be counted quickly along with the election day votes.
In-person election day votes favor Trump, mail votes will favor Harris, while in-person early vote tends to be more of a mix, and given Trump supporters’ distrust of mail ballots, could be more pro-Trump than early vote in general.
I would suggest looking at the earliest poll closing states: Georgia (7 p.m. ET) North Carolina (7:30 p.m. ET) and Pennsylvania (8 p.m. ET). Michigan also closes at 8 p.m., but a small part of the state is in the Central Time Zone), and news organizations have said they will not say anything about an outcome in a state until ALL polls are closed.
But make sure you know WHAT is being reported!
Josh Clinton, Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Poll
What happens in MI and WI and PA. AZ will not be called. But if Harris loses any of those it will be very hard for her. We should get calls in MI and WI as they count their vote quickly. We should also have a good idea for PA, but if it is razor-thin it will be hard to call.
Charles Franklin, Director, Marquette Law School Poll
An unexpected Harris win in NC or GA would give an early indication favoring her. Likewise, a Trump win in PA or MI would point to his winning. All four states are in the Eastern time zone so will report votes before the central time WI or AZ and NV in Mountain time.
Karlyn Bowman, Distinguished Senior Fellow Emeritus, American Enterprise Institute
I’ll be looking at turnout in the states that are fairly straightforward to call. I don’t know if high turnout with indicate that low-propensity people are coming out to vote. It may.
I’ll also be looking at what percentage women are of the vote. If it is 53 percent or 54 percent it may be a good night for Harris.
Will the Harris campaign hit or exceed the Biden or Obama levels among African Americans and Latinos? That will be important, too. Of course the flip side is that if Trump is doing well among Latinos or African Americans that can be very important for him, too.
In the swing states, I’ll be looking at different demographics to the extent we will have them on Tuesday night. The Dems wanted to have their convention in Milwaukee in 2020 and the GOP did in 2024.
Wisconsin is older (a possible plus for Harris), and it also has a high proportion of people with less than a college degree (plus for Trump). Those demographics will be very important there and to a lesser extent in Michigan. I just don’t feel I know PA well enough to say anything.
I’ll be looking at Latinos and union members in Nevada and Latinos in AZ.
The pollsters look at urbanicity. Density equals Democrats. How well are they doing in central cities? How well are Republicans doing in more rural part of the swing states? And of course there are the all-important inner and outer suburbs, where there are many college plus Republican women.
I think the national gender gap will be about what it has been in recent elections (around 20 points), but I’ll be interested to see turnout of young men and women and what many are describing as a gender chasm among them.
John Zogby, Senior Partner, John Zogby Strategies
Harris needs a huge turnout among 18-34-year-olds, especially women. These are the key to her victory. New polls show her about where she needs to be among Blacks (90 percent) and Hispanics (61 percent). If she is showing a strong lead among early voters in Pennsylvania, that is a key indicator that she could be having a good night.
David Avella, Chairman, GOPAC
Independents and partisan composition. In competitive federal elections, Independent voters are outcome deciders. Take the last two presidential elections when in 2016, Trump won independents by 4 points; while in 2020, Biden won this group by 13 points.
Regarding partisan composition, it is essential to watch whether one party has a significant advantage in turnout. Partisan composition matters for raw votes as well as the impact it has on the number of votes needed from independents to win.
Equally noteworthy will be the geography of the partisans. For example, high turnout of rural and exurban Republicans offers more guarantees for former President Trump than suburban Republicans.
Just as, college towns and inner cities offers more guarantees for Vice President Harris than heavily blue-collar and Hispanic communities.
Courtney Kennedy, Vice President of Methods and Innovation, Pew Research Center
We would all like to know on election night who won or at least have a strong inkling of who won based on a few metrics. But we may do the public a disservice by suggesting that is a realistic expectation.
In 2020, it was not possible to know on election night who was going to win based on the available data. We all just needed to wait until more votes were counted. It was agonizing, but that was the reality.
I would not give the public a false sense that they can divine the winner before the race is called.
Robert Blizzard, Founder, UpONEInsights
All politics used to be local, now all politics is national. I have a sneaking suspicion that the seven battleground states MAY all vote as one bloc.
All seven states have seen the same advertising, and received equal attention from both campaigns. With the internet, social media, cable news all dominating the landscape, a swing voter in Georgia is not all that different from a swing voter in Wisconsin anymore. In 2016, Trump won six of these seven states and in 2020, Biden won six of these seven states.
That being said, with polls closing earlier in Georgia and North Carolina and then right after in Michigan and Pennsylvania, my money would be on the candidate who gets the first call in one of those four states to take the presidency. (Even if that first call doesn’t come until Wednesday or Thursday next week.)
Chris Jackson Senior Vice President, US Public Affairs, Ipsos
We are expecting a total turnout at or just below the record-setting turnout of 2020. If Trump is getting more votes than 2020 in the smaller, rural, Republican-leaning counties that report earliest, he is likely going to have a good night.
However, we will ultimately have to wait for the larger cities to report before we know clearly what the results will be, a count that might take several days due to laws (most of which were enacted by Republicans) limiting how quickly the votes can be counted.
Nicole Schlinger, Founder & President, CampaignHQ
Early returns showing a strong Trump performance in places like Wisconsin or Michigan, would spell trouble for the Harris campaign. Pennsylvania and Michigan are in the same time zone.
Trump is expected to do a little better in Pennsylvania than Michigan, but it would make for a long night for Democrats if he’s keeping it closer in Michigan early on.
North Carolina would also be an early indicator—the governor’s race there is a lost cause, but can Trump hold everything else? He needs to perform well there.
It goes without saying that when watching these early returns, we should take into account whether or not the early vote has been incorporated.
Nate Lerner, Principal, Build the Wave LLC
The results to watch for on election night are how PA, GA, and AZ are voting. Those are the biggest swing states. The candidate who wins 2 of those 3 has basically won.
One other thing I’d like to mention is that I believe the polls may actually be weighted towards Trump this year. That’s because pollsters failed to capture support for Trump in 2016 and 2020, so to avoid being wrong again are likely weighing the polls in his favor.
We saw this in 2022 with the Red Wave that polls would happen but never did. Regardless, my view since August has been that this race is an absolute toss up and anyone who says otherwise is either politically biased or uninformed.
Bill McInturff, Partner, Public Opinion Strategies
Virginia can be a helpful barometer as polls close at 7 p.m. and the state releases vote return data quickly. If Trump is within three or four points, it’s a big Trump night.
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