What is Harris' Most Realistic Best-Case Scenario?

Figuring out the best-case scenario that's most likely to happen on Election Night

There’s a lot of speculation about all the different Electoral College scenarios that could determine the outcome of the election. The combinations and permutations discussed all tend to indicate a white-knuckle affair certain to give lovers of Democracy heart attacks.

Wouldn’t it be nice to think about how Kamala Harris can pull out a quick, decisive victory that calms the mind and spirit?

Then let’s try to figure out the best possible scenario for Harris that is most likely to happen.

This is different from what is simply the most likely scenario or what is the best-case scenario. The most likely scenario might be a close contest, in which Harris wins the “Blue Wall” states of Mi, WI, and PA and loses the other swing states, making for an Electoral College nail-biter.

And the best-case scenario for Harris is obviously her winning every state and sweeping the Electoral College on her way to an undeniably overwhelming victory. But that’s not going to happen.

Then what’s the most realistic best-case scenario for Harris?

There is a realistic way that she can win in dominant fashion and do it early enough to avoid letting Trump get out in front of the results with his wild-eyed grievances and foment distrust and unrest. A way that would mitigate the effects of Trump and his followers saying that the election is being stolen.

This scenario would need to be a decisive one, leaving no doubt as to the eventual winner. But it would also have to develop early enough to be a quick knock-out punch to quell the rage and chaos that is fully expected to ensue.

Because decisive and early are the keys factors here, then the most realistic best-case scenario starts with a Harris victory in Florida.

Is it realistic for Harris to win Florida?

Yes. And I predict that she does.

Is it likely? I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll say that it is very possible and, yes, realistic. It should be considered in at least some Electoral College analyses. Yet it’s largely ignored. Why?

I assume it’s because the public polling shows a not-so-close election in Florida. According to 538’s polling aggregate, Trump has a lead of just over 6 points. It should be noted that the average has been skewed a bit recently by ActiVote, an unscientific online polling platform, which showed a 10- and 12-point Trump lead in its last 2 polls. Other than this, the polls have been pretty stable in the 4-5 point range.

But, as you may know if you regularly read my work, my feeling about polls is that a margin under double-digits just means that both candidates have a chance. And if we look at the recent electoral history in Florida and the dynamics of the current election cycle, it points to Harris having a great shot in the state.

First, consider the state’s recent election history. Obama won the state in 2008 and 2012, and Trump won in 2016 and 2020. The margins went steadily from D+3, D+1, R+1, R+3, respectively, so you might say that the state is irreversibly turning red. But you could have said the same trend was occurring in the 3 previous cycles (1996, 2000, 2004), when the margins were D+6, Tie, R+5. And yet, it went right back into the D column again when Obama ran. FL hasn’t been a solidly and consistently partisan state for some time—more than 100 years, in fact.

In the last 100 years, Florida has largely gone the way of the nation in choosing a president, with an occasional miss here and there. Prior to the 1928 election, it was reliably Democratic. After that, starting when Republican Herbert Hoover was elected, while it hasn’t exactly picked the president, it hasn’t been too far away from doing so. The winner in the presidential election has won Florida 22 out of the last 25 times. And those three were historically close or anomalous elections: Nixon in 1960 (very close), Bush in 1992 (anomalous third-party strength), and Trump in 2020 (also close). So the idea that Florida is a “red” state is simply ignoring the recent close margins and its most recent 100-year electoral history.

In reality, Florida is much more of a “swing state” than Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada or Arizona have ever been in modern times. Sure, those states are closely contested now, but it’s only been that way for 1 or 2 cycles at the most for all of them. The “blue wall” states of MI, WI, and PA were double digit wins for Democrats in the Obama era and previously (hence the “blue wall” moniker). This is why the Clinton campaign took them for granted and paid the price in 2016.

The fact that these states are competitive at all right now suggests we should not just ignore Florida, which has not been outwardly decisive in most recent elections. It’s hard for the media to label Florida a true swing state today, but if it’s not, it’s right on the cusp, as it would then be the most in-play of the non-swing-states.

Florida’s current election cycle dynamics tend to favor Harris and Democrats as well. There are three voter initiatives on the ballot that will likely drive more turnout for Democrats, left-leaning, left-curious, and anti-Trump voters, listed below in order of motivational power:

1. The Right to Abortion Initiative

2. The Marijuana Legalization Initiative

3. Repeal of Public Financing for Statewide Campaigns

The first two are fairly obvious and have been covered extensively in the press. They expand abortion rights, decriminalize marijuana usage, and should create more interest among Harris-leaning voters than might occur otherwise.

The last one is about whether or not the state should provide public financing for candidates in statewide election campaigns. This public financing has favored Democrats in recent years, as Republicans have been more successful at private fundraising and therefore haven’t needed public financing help. Also, public financing tends to help challenges to incumbents, since it’s easier in general for incumbents to fundraise. Since there are more Republican incumbents holding statewide offices, removing public financing would favor Republicans further.

This isn’t quite the hot button issue that the first two items are, but when you combine all of them, you have a perfect storm of reasons for people that would tend to vote against Trump to get off the couch and do so.

Another factor is the other major national race, the Senate race between incumbent Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. The polling for this race has been following a similar track to the presidential polling, although it’s been a bit closer. But the key here may be how disliked Scott is among his home state electorate.

Recent approval polling conducted in Aug had Scott at a dismal 35% approval rating, and startling 49% disapproval. His approval among men is even, while his numbers among women are 28% approve and 52% disapprove. Even among Republicans he is only at 59% approval, a pretty bad showing for someone within their own party.

People don’t like Scott. Republicans appear to be revolting against their own party on the national stage already, and with disapproval at these levels, it stands to reason that a high-turnout election will result in more anti-Trump and anti-Scott voters.

And, perhaps most interestingly of all, there’s the Puerto Rico factor. Trump’s campaign rally at Madison Square Gardin in New York included some very harsh and disparaging language regarding Puerto Rico, and all Latinos for that matter. There have been signs and rumblings that Puerto Ricans across the country are very upset and more motivated to vote than they were previously. Nicky Jam, a popular singer with Puerto Rican heritage, had endorsed Trump a couple weeks ago but retracted his endorsement in response to this debacle.

Florida is home to the largest population of Puerto Ricans in the country, at just under 1.2 million. If these people are now highly motivated and angry at Trump, this could be what swings the states to Harris.

And for all those poll-watchers out there: in 2020 Biden led 538’s final polling aggregate for Florida by 2.5 points. And he lost by 3, a near-6-point swing. Polls are typically off by quite a bit.

Kamala can win Florida.

The power of Florida

If Harris wins Florida, it doesn’t guarantee her a victory, but it almost does. Her path becomes so broad at that point that it’s practically a given that she’ll win. If we take away the swing states including Florida from the equation, and each candidate wins the remaining states they should, then Harris would have an advantage of 226 Electoral Votes (EVs) to 189.

If we add Florida into Harris’ column, then she suddenly has a very commanding lead of 256 to 189. But as we all know, she hasn’t won yet. She needs at least 270.

She’ll be 14 EVs away from victory at this point.

Let me digress for a moment and say that I do think there’s a potential reality where she wins some combination of Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio. After all, Obama won them all in 2008, and without the type of Republican support that Harris is bound to get this time around. This campaign certainly has the feeling of a similar generational shift of the political landscape. If this happens, a Harris victory will be well in hand.

But it’s more likely that she’ll lose these three states, though I think they’ll be closer than most expect.

So I’m going to focus on just the most realistic states for her to win, the remaining swing states; namely GA, PA, NC, MI, WI, AZ, and NV.

If she wins only one of GA, PA, NC, or MI, she’s won the Electoral College; the election is over, since they have more than 14 EVs each.

If she doesn’t win any of those, she’d have to win any two of AZ, NV, and WI.

And, of course, the other option is one of each of these groups.

Feeling the need for speed

Let’s revisit Florida again for a moment to examine its other big potential advantage: speed.

Florida is going to be one of the earliest states to count their votes, as their polls close at 7 PM EST. In addition, state law allows early and mail-in votes to be processed and counted before election day. This is in contrast to all of the other important battleground states, which prohibit any counting of early votes before election day, even if processing them early is allowed.

This means that as soon as polls close at 7 PM, Florida is going to post large batches of results right out of the gate. The first several batches probably won’t be enough to call the winner, but it could give us an insight to how the election is going to go rather quickly. Already, more than half of the total number of people that voted in 2020 have voted early this election. This may go up as high as 60-70% of the 2020 total by the end of early voting this weekend. If Harris has a commanding lead soon after polls close it will portend well for her prospects of winning the state.

Florida actually has a very efficient and reliable voting system. They learned their lessons from 2000 and have tidied up their election processes since then. The winner could be declared among the earliest of states as long as the margin is not razor thin. Hence, a relatively quick declaration of a Harris win in Florida is feasible.

Florida meets our requirements of realistic, early and decisive. So, which of the remaining swing states is best suited to also fit this standard?

It makes the most logical sense to focus on only one state to get Harris over the 270 EV threshold, as opposed to two or more, as this would increase the efficiency and speed of the results. This narrows it down to GA, PA, NC, or MI.

At this point, it comes down strictly to a combination of how fast we can expect these states to count and release reliable results. My main sources of information in the speed analysis are the 270toWin poll closing times and the Ballotpedia 2024 vote counting guidelines by state.

I’m going to start by taking Pennsylvania off the table. It has two things going against it: their polls close later than the others, at 8 PM EST; and they can’t even start processing the early votes until 7 AM on Election Day. This was a big reason why the 2020 election denial movement gathered momentum.

That year a “red mirage” scenario existed in PA, where Republicans looked like they were leading as the vote-counting early, but then their lead slowly disintegrated when the early-votes started trickling in, resulting in a solid win for Biden. The Republican-controlled legislature had the chance to remedy this slowness in the years since, but passed up on that opportunity so that this mirage could continue to exist and set the stage for another round of election denialism conspiracy theories this year.

I think PA vote counting will be improved this year. In 2020 they had just implemented their mail-in voting system for the first time, which coincided with the Covid pandemic and led to an overwhelming task in processing and counting more votes than the system could handle in a short amount of time. But, even with some improvement, the system seems primed for a delayed counting process relative to the other swing states, and hence, we may not know until later on Election Day or the next day or longer who won the state.

The next state to get booted is North Carolina. They have an advantage with their poll closing time of 7:30 PM EST, which is among the earliest. But their early voting (EV) and mail-in voting (MIV) process is not designed for speed. They are allowed to process EV/MIV votes as early as five weeks before Election Day, which is good. But they can’t actually count them until 5 PM on Election Day (2 PM under some circumstances). This means a slow counting process and late result.

They have already surpassed 2 million early votes this year, which is significantly high. Plus, they have a famously large active-duty military population (among the top five in the country), who are reliant on overseas mail-in ballots. Much like PA there’s a good chance we won’t know the actual winner of NC until very late on Election Day, or even perhaps a day or more later.

Now we’re down to Michigan and Georgia.

Like PA, MI polls close at 8 PM EST, which is a knock against them for the purposes of this analysis. But they do at least allow for some processing of early votes before election day.

According to Ballotpedia:

Jurisdictions with at least 5,000 people may begin processing 8 days before election day, and other jurisdictions may begin the Monday before election day.

They can start their counting of EV/MIV at 7 AM on Election Day, which is early and favors a quick outcome to some degree. We will probably know MI’s vote totals on Election Night, albeit probably a bit later due to the later counting start time.

Georgia looks like the state that best meets all our criteria for an early and decisive win. First, their polls close at 7 PM EST, so results will start coming in early, much like FL.

Second, they allow for the processing of EV/MIV as early as the third Monday before Election Day, so three weeks in advance. In addition, they verify the signatures of the voters upon receipt of the ballot. And they can start counting them bright and early on Election Day, 7 AM EST.

GA and MI both have the issue of a very large and dense population center, Atlanta and Detroit, respectively, that will be slower to count and highly favor Harris. So the final results will probably still take a while, but both could be comfortably called early, depending on how the rest of the state goes. If Harris out-performs Biden’s losing margins in each state’s rural and red regions, it can be assumed she’ll win each easily once the metro votes start pouring in.

GA gets the nod here, however, due to the earlier poll closing time and the longer period available to process the EV/MIV before Election Day.

Quick and Easy

The main question then is: will Harris have a decisive victory in GA? If it’s a nail-biter it could go on for hours or possibly days. If she out-performs expectations early, it can potentially be called quickly. It’s hard to confidently predict for sure, of course.

But is it realistic for her to have a decisive victory there?

I think it is. She’s put tons of energy into the state, not only in the Atlanta metro area, but in the surrounding suburbs and rural areas as well. It seems very possible that she’ll do better than Biden in those regions.

By contrast, Donald Trump has hardly put any energy into the state, and the Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has not exactly been an avid surrogate for him. Plus, right now Democrats have the momentum in the state, having flipped the Presidential winner and both Senators over the Dems’ side 4 years ago. And since then, Trump hasn’t exactly helped his cause with his behavior and legal problems.

So, there we have it. As weird as it seems, Florida and Georgia are the key to a satisfying election day. They realistically could put the whole thing to bed quickly, and create an atmosphere of calm and certainty throughout the rest of the day and beyond.

This would indeed be a best-case scenario.