CNN's latest “Road to 270” map shows a small but consequential move toward Harris

CNN
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The 2024 presidential election battleground has proven remarkably stable over the past two months after the race was reshaped with the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket.

We're making just a small but significant adjustment to our current Road to 270 election map as the race enters its final five weeks. We may adjust this outlook before Election Day if we see significant changes in polling or investment in candidates and campaigns in any of the remaining battlegrounds.

CHECK OUT CNN'S ROAD TO 270 INTERACTIVE MAP

In this latest edition of our Electoral College Outlook, we shift the single electoral vote awarded to the winner of Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District from a toss-up to a tilt toward Harris.

Mysterious blue dots appear on the lawns of the crucial battleground state. Here's what they mean

The Cornhusker State is one of two states, along with Maine, that split a portion of its electoral votes, and the vice president has a significant lead in the fight for an electoral vote from an Omaha-area seat. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released last Friday found Harris has 53% support among likely voters in the 2nd District, compared to former President Donald Trump's 42%. A New York Times/Siena College poll released over the weekend found very similar results. In 2020, Joe Biden led the district by more than 6 points on his way to winning the presidency. Harris and her allies have significantly outperformed Trump and his supporters in Nebraska and are poised to extend that lead in the final five weeks of the campaign.

This one step on the map also helps show the clearest, most direct paths to the 270 electoral votes needed for Harris and Trump to win. In the poll average of the seven contested states, Harris is doing slightly better against Trump in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin than in the Sun Belt states of Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona. If Harris repeated Biden's 2020 victories in just the three Blue Wall states and secured the electoral votes in Omaha County, which we are currently trending her way, she would have exactly 270 electoral votes and would be president-elect.

If Trump repeats his victories in every state he won in 2020, he would only need to flip two states – Georgia and Pennsylvania – to receive 270 electoral votes and secure a second term in the White House. But that depends on North Carolina staying in his column, and the most recent CNN poll there showed a tie race with Harris and Trump at 48% each.

As the contest enters its final 35 days, it can be very revealing to track the resources each side is putting into advertising to reach the shrinking share of undecided voters and to ensure that existing supporters turn out to vote. It can be very revealing what the campaigns are betting on. The Harris campaign and its Democratic allies spent nearly twice as much advertising money in September as the Trump campaign and its Republican allies. Democrats spent about $293 million on advertising in the seven battleground states last month, compared to Republicans' $157 million investment in the same states, according to AdImpact. Three of the world's largest electoral districts – Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan – accounted for more than 60% of the month's total spending.

Trump now has 24 states (and one congressional district in Maine) that are either firmly in his corner or trending his way, for a total of 219 electoral votes, 51 votes short of the 270 needed to win.

Harris, for her part, has 19 states plus the District of Columbia (and the one congressional district in Nebraska) that are either clearly in her favor or trending in her direction, bringing her electoral vote total to 226, 44 short of the required 270 votes.

We currently classify seven states with a total of 93 electoral votes as true errors.

We should be clear about what these electoral prospects are and, more importantly, what they are not. It's a current snapshot of the Electoral College landscape that will likely prove to be another very close and extraordinarily consequential presidential election. This is not a prediction of how things will turn out in November.

We base this current outlook on public and private polling, as well as conversations with campaign advisers, Republican and Democratic political activists, members of Congress, and political professionals in contact with outside groups willing to take action in the race.

Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (4), Nebraska (4), North Dakota (3), Ohio (17), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas ( 40), Utah (6), West Virginia (4), Wyoming (3)

Florida (30), Maine 2nd Congressional District (1)

Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Nevada (6), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania (19), Wisconsin (10)

Colorado (10), Minnesota (10), Nebraska 2nd Congressional District (1), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Oregon (8), Virginia (13)

California (54), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), DC (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Maine (3), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), New Jersey (14) , New York (28), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12)

CNN's David Wright contributed to this report.