A Steady Presidential Race Hides Wild Election Possibilities

Four weeks out, the polls are calm. But a close race masks a wide range of outcomes.

The presidential race polls, at this point, are kind of boring: Vice President Kamala Harris is leading by 2 percentage points in Pennsylvania. Yawn. She’s tied with former President Donald Trump in North Carolina? Same as it ever was. Trump’s up by a point in Arizona? Yeah, that’s what we expected to hear.

But four weeks before Election Day, a very steady and excruciatingly close presidential race is masking a still wide-open election, where even a slight polling error could lead to a variety of truly unexpected outcomes.

The election analysis firm Split Ticket gives Democratic nominee Harris a 57% chance of winning the presidency, based on its proprietary analysis of polling and other data. The firm’s forecast hasn’t changed much since she entered the race, despite dozens of additional polls, with Harris maintaining a tiny edge in Pennsylvania and Midwestern states while slightly trailing in the Sun Belt and North Carolina.

But Split Ticket co-founder Lakshya Jain said the seeming stability of the race as a toss-up is an illusion. It’s entirely possible Trump outperforms his 2016 margin of victory or that Harris wins all seven swing states ― an outcome that shows up in 25% of the firm’s election simulations.

“Nothing would really surprise me,” Jain told HuffPost. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Kamala Harris lost Pennsylvania but won North Carolina, right? These types of things happen.”