Current Nowcast
| Biden | Trump |
|---|---|
| 363 | 175 |
Biden continues to show strong performance in most swing states, producing a commanding lead in the Electoral College. Our State by State analysis is as follows.
| State | Prob Biden Win | Commentary |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 9.4% | Polling continues to be light with no new data since the middle of August. All previous polls show a strong Trump majority. |
| Alaska | 45.5% | Whilst recent polling shows a narrowing of the gap, on current data we believe Trump will narrowly win here |
| Arizona | 94.1% | Should be a strong Biden State, but polling mid-September indicated Trump improving his position. Around a week ago we briefly had Trump with over 50% probability of winning, but this has slipped away. |
| Florida | 82.0% | We have seen a steady improvement in the Sunshine State for Biden over the past month, going from a 58% chance of victory 30 days ago to over 80% now. |
| Georgia | 95.4% | This should be safe GOP territory, but recent polling is all against Trump. If the election were held today we would see a comprehensive Biden win here. |
| Iowa | 28.9% | Iowa has remained strong for Trump, with only a brief wobble in the polling in mid September. |
| Kansas | 5.0% | Normally a safe GOP State, recent polling indicates a statistically significant chance of an upset. We await further polling to see the trend. |
| Louisiana | 3.1% | Solid Trump territory now |
| Maine 2 | 84.5% | Whilst the rest of Maine is solidly blue, this is a GOP strong point. However, we have had Biden in the lead since early September and recent polling confirms that position. |
| Michigan | 95.7% | A State Trump really needs to do well in if he wants to repeat 2016, Biden is currently polling extremely well here. |
| Minnesota | 100% | At the moment Biden is leading by a solid 6% of more of the vote here, with enough regular polling to remove any doubt of his victory. |
| Missouri | 0.4% | Earlier in the campaign Biden was doing well here, but for the past month this has been solid Trump territory. |
| Nevada | 86.5% | Should be solid Democrat, but similar to neighbouring Arizona Trump is seeing improved polling. |
| North Carolina | 76.3% | Mixed polling – most give Biden a lead but Harper and Uni of Massachusetts have both given Trump a narrow victory. The current trend for Trump is certainly positive. |
| Ohio | 77.7% | Should be a comfortable Trump win, but recent polling has shown a dramatic move to Biden, with even Fox News giving him a 5 point lead. |
| Pennsylvania | 99.4% | Hasn’t polled well for Trump for over two months |
| South Carolina | 4.9% | Should be at least a 5% victory for Trump |
| Texas | 17.4% | When Texas becomes a swing State you know Biden is doing well. We had Biden at 40% chance of victory a month ago, but polling since then has moved in Trump’s favour. The most recent poll from PPP however had both candidates neck and neck. |
| Virginia | 98.1% | Has been solidly Biden for three months with only a recent hint that Trump might be slowly picking up votes. |
| Wisconsin | 87.3% | Another one of the Midwest States that Trump needs to win to retain the White House. Some evidence votes are now slowly moving to him, but not enough to change the outcome. |
Probability of Biden Winning State
Presidential Election Forecast Philosophy
Our US Presidential Election forecast is based on polling in individual states. We run a monte-carlo simulation across the entire country and then calculate the probability of each candidate winning each state or electoral district (in the case of Maine and Nebraska). From this we allocate Electoral College votes State by State giving a final total for each candidate.
Do you allocate whole States / Districts to Candidates?
Only when a candidate has a 95% or greater chance of winning a State will we automatically assign all the Electoral College votes to one candidate.
Imagine three states where Candidate A has a 60% chance of winning each with 5 Electoral College votes available in each State. Whilst Candidate B is not likely to win an individual State in and of itself, the probability they win at least one of the three is actually 78.4%. Candidate B has an almost 30% chance of winning two of the three States and over a 6% chance of winning all three.
If we allocate 60% of the Electoral College Votes in each State to Candidate A they will have 9, and Candidate B will have 6. This is a better representation of the actual possible outcome across all three States.