The electoral college is still close, yes, but it is not what you are saying in some of those states. For instance, the Virginia polling you cite stood out to me as not matching most of the polling even when Biden was running, so I looked into that:
There aren’t polls in 538 for Virginia that were run after Biden dropped out
The range your writing to me looks though you are looking at only a results of the singlular FAU/Mainstreet USA Poll from not only before Biden dropped out, but the days after Trump was shot. This poll also has a 4-5% margin of error due to low sample rates. The reason I suspect that this was the only poll being looked at is the poll has a ton of entries in 538 because it was broken down quite a bit. It asked likely voters and register voters about Harris as a hypothetical both with third parties and without (this creates 4 entries in there). The difference between likely and registered voters created a trump +1 and a trump +4.
Most of the other hypothetical Harris polls in Virginia before Biden dropped showed Harris up. Considering Harris has generally improved compared to hypothetical polling before Biden dropped in most states, it’s unlikely to be Trump +1 to +4 at the moment
538’s moving averages show a bit of a different picture for some of those states as well. For instance, Pennsylvania shows a narrow +0.6% Harris average (note though that they do weight register voter polls different than likely voter polls)
Election is still close, but there has been movement in swing states. Enough that some election models are now changing who is most likely to win if only slightly. For instance, Nate Silver’s model puts Harris just a bit above in win % including electoral college in it
The electoral college is still close, yes, but it is not what you are saying in some of those states. For instance, the Virginia polling you cite stood out to me as not matching most of the polling even when Biden was running, so I looked into that:
There aren’t polls in 538 for Virginia that were run after Biden dropped out
The range your writing to me looks though you are looking at only a results of the singlular FAU/Mainstreet USA Poll from not only before Biden dropped out, but the days after Trump was shot. This poll also has a 4-5% margin of error due to low sample rates. The reason I suspect that this was the only poll being looked at is the poll has a ton of entries in 538 because it was broken down quite a bit. It asked likely voters and register voters about Harris as a hypothetical both with third parties and without (this creates 4 entries in there). The difference between likely and registered voters created a trump +1 and a trump +4.
Most of the other hypothetical Harris polls in Virginia before Biden dropped showed Harris up. Considering Harris has generally improved compared to hypothetical polling before Biden dropped in most states, it’s unlikely to be Trump +1 to +4 at the moment
538’s moving averages show a bit of a different picture for some of those states as well. For instance, Pennsylvania shows a narrow +0.6% Harris average (note though that they do weight register voter polls different than likely voter polls)
Election is still close, but there has been movement in swing states. Enough that some election models are now changing who is most likely to win if only slightly. For instance, Nate Silver’s model puts Harris just a bit above in win % including electoral college in it
Just going with what we have, and like I say, there has been positive movement for her since the last time I ran these stats.
The concern for Virginia was that it had been solid for Biden, with him out, it’s definitely at risk.
What will be interesting is to see how all this changes once she picks a VP and they start team campaigning.