The Breakdown Point's 2024 Election Forecast
Bringing Stability to a Volatile Election
FINAL UPDATE: Tuesday, 11/5/24 at 7:00am PT
Note 11/5/24: The “tossup” category has been removed for the final state-level predictions.
Let’s start with a look at the 2024 Electoral College Map. Because what’s a good election forecast without an electoral college map?
The electoral college map reflects the current state of the race. The model establishes a baseline margin for each state by using economic indicators and past voting patterns. It then adjusts this baseline with up-to-date state polling and betting market data to capture current trends in the political environment.
Now let’s take a look at an alternative depiction of the electoral college map. Because two electoral college maps are better than one.
This map scales each state according to its electoral college share. Each tile represents 1 electoral vote.
What goes into these predictions?
Great question, the following table gives some insight into the metrics used to predict the final margin of the national popular vote and 16 most competitive state contests.
So what does all this mean? Who is going to win?
That really is the 3,267,039,019 dollar question1. And I don’t have the answer. What I do have, however, is another chart. Below is the outcome of 44,000 simulations of the 2024 election and the results summarized in the final 2024 election top line:
If you’re interested in how the horse race has changed over time, I have one final visualization showing the trend lines for each candidate since I published the forecast:
My understanding of this race, after spending hours poring over data, preparing thousands of lines of code, and staying up until 3 a.m. because I “just can’t get this thing to work,” is fundamentally unchanged from where I started. I think this race is a toss-up2, and I wouldn’t be surprised if either candidate walked away with over 300 electoral votes. The only thing that would surprise me is if the election comes and goes without controversy.
The amount of money bet on the election winner per polymarket.com as of 11/5/24.
With Trump’s lead continuing to grow in this forecast, it may be time to reconsider this statement. However, I still believe the race is very close, possibly even a toss-up, given how election data has misled us in the past, especially during the Trump era.