Kamala Harris' chances of flipping one of the border states Donald Trump took in the 2020 elections are rather slim, considering he took the now Republican strongholds of Texas and Florida, and where the former president has a larger lead than four years ago.
President Joe Biden won in California, New Mexico, and Arizona, the latter being the only battleground state in 2020, a scenario repeating itself in this election cycle.
But looking at Harris' chances of actually flipping a state, they look slimmer than they would have four years ago. Back then, the Biden-Harris ticket lost by less than four percentage points, getting 47.86% of the support compared to Trump and Pence's 51.22%.
The Republican edge is even larger now, with FiveThirtyEight's polling average showing a 6-point advantage for Trump, a gap that has grown over the past weeks. It currently stands at 50.8% for Trump to Harris' 44.9%.
The GOP candidate has a wider lead in Texas, the other red state Trump took in 2020. Back then, the then-president got just over 52% of the vote compared to Biden's 46.5%. The gap has also expanded over this electoral cycle, now standing at 6.6 percentage points, with Trump getting 50.8% of the vote compared to Harris 44.2%, according to the latest polling average.
Arizona features the only close race in the southern border, currently standing at 48.5% for Trump and 46.8% for Harris. The momentum is on the side of the Republican, considering the vice president was actually ahead in the race in late August. She has however managed to marginally slim down the gap, as it stood at 2.1 percentage points on October 19. Despite being within the margin of error, NPR considers the race is a likely Republican one and that its 11 electoral votes will go Trump's way. Joe Biden closely won the race in the past election, taking it by 0.3 percentage points.
California and New Mexico, the states that comfortably went to the Democrats in 2020, are still heavily favoring Harris, However, the advantage is now lower than before. Biden got 63.5% of the vote back then, compared to 34.3% for Trump-Pence. The gap now stands at close to 24 percentage points, with 55% for Harris to Trump's 35%.
As for New Mexico, the more than 10-point gap from 2020 has narrowed to 7.4 percentage points, according to the latest poll average, which shows the vice president getting 49.9% of the support compared to Trump's 42.5%,
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