by Jason Cohen
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten warned on Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris’ current national lead over former President Donald Trump is too slim to signal a likely victory in the November election due to the electoral college.
Harris’ national lead over Trump grew by just a single point following their debate last week, despite a majority of viewers believing she won, according to ABC News/Ipsos data released on Sunday. Enten, on “CNN News Central,” noted Harris’ 2.5-point lead in his polling aggregate gives her roughly a 50 percent chance of winning.
CNN's Harry Enten Warns Harris Currently In Polling 'Danger Zone' pic.twitter.com/PmJrdZORV7
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 16, 2024
“Okay, so basically, you note that 2.5-point lead nationally here, right? Okay, Harris’ chances if she wins the popular vote by two to three points, the chance she wins the electoral college is only 53 percent. The bottom line is … you have to get all the way north to about three to four points for Harris to have a clear, clear, clear chance,” Enten told host John Berman. “The majority, the clear majority chance of winning the electoral college. If she only wins by less than two, look at that, only a 23 percent chance of winning … Harris is right now in that danger zone where, basically, about half the time, given that popular vote margin nationally, she would win.”
“And so here’s the situation: chance Harris wins the popular vote at this point is about 70 percent, but the chance she wins the electoral college is only about 50 percent. So the bottom line is, at this hour, John, there‘s about a 20 percent chance that Kamala Harris wins the popular vote but actually loses in the electoral college,” he added. “So we could be heading towards one of these splits that we saw in 2016 and in 2000, whereby one candidate, Kamala Harris, wins in the popular vote, but loses in the electoral college.”
Moreover, Harris only has a 1.7 percent lead over Trump nationally and just a 0.2 percent advantage in the top seven battleground states, according to RealClearPolitics averages of recent polls.
“Basically, at this hour, we’re right in that sort of weird middle zone where we honestly don’t know what‘s going to happen based upon the popular vote,” Enten said. “And that is why those national polls that show Kamala Harris ahead, at this point, really don’t matter that much.”
Enten noted recently that the presidential race is so “tight” that Trump will secure an electoral college victory if he “outperforms his current polls by just a single point.”
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Jason Cohen is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Image “Harry Enten” by CNN.
