CNN polling guru says battleground state sweep ‘more likely than not’

CNN polling guru Harry Enten said he believes a sweep of the main battleground states in the presidential election is “more likely than not,” even as polls show all seven of the big swing states almost even between Vice President Harris and former President Trump. 

Enten, CNN’s senior political data reporter, said in segment on the network Thursday that his electoral model gives a 60 percent chance that the winner of the election receives at least 300 electoral votes. 

“So for all the talk that we’ve had about this election being historically close, which it is, chances are the winner will still actually score a relative blowout in the Electoral College,” Enten said. 

Polls have consistently placed the race as neck and neck, with neither candidate leading in any of the seven swing states in The Hill/Decision Desk HQ polling average by more than 2 points. If Harris and Trump split those states, with the winning candidate taking three or four, they would likely only just get above the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch victory. 

But if they were to win most or all of the states, they would get above 300 votes, a more comfortable margin. 

Enten said the average polling error since 1972 in the key swing states has been 3.4 percentage points, and if the polls are off by that much this year, one candidate could sweep all seven.

He noted that past elections have shown one candidate outperforming expectations in most states, suggesting the states are likely to widely vote more Democratic or Republican across the board.

He said 92 percent of states’ polling averages underestimated then-President Obama in 2012, 83 percent underestimated Trump in 2016 and 100 percent underestimated Trump in 2020. 

“So this time around, don’t be surprised if the swing state polls, when they underestimate one candidate, they underestimate all of them in the states. And that would lead to a relative Electoral College blowout, with one of the candidates winning at least 300 electoral votes,” Enten said. 

Presidential elections have generally been very close races in recent years, so the race is still likely to be close even if one candidate carries most of the swing states. In 2020, for example, President Biden won six of the seven battlegrounds that are considered likely to decide the election this year, but he carried some of them by only a few tens of thousands of votes, putting him over the top.

A presidential candidate has not won in a true landslide since 1988, when George H.W. Bush won more than 400 electoral votes in his victory.