What Would The Electoral College Map Look Like If Rasmussen's National Poll Is Correct?

Thanks to a nifty tool on 538, we can find out!

So Rasmussen just came out with their final national survey of 12,546 U.S. Likely Voters. It was conducted on October 10-29, 2024. The margin of sampling error is +/- 1 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Rasmussen gave their final estimate a D+2 modifier.

Rasmussen’s data indicates the final national popular vote will be R+3, meaning Donald Trump will win the national popular vote by 3 points. This estimate is only one point higher than Atlas Intel’s result. Atlas was the most accurate pollster of 2020.

The election website 538 has a nifty tool that lets you plug voting margins into various demographic groups to see what the impact would be on the electoral college based on each states’ known demographic profile.

When I plug Rasmussen’s crosstab data into the 538 tool, this is what the electoral college map looks like using 2020 turnout data:

Here are the demographic profiles. The least accurate one with the most impact is probably the way college voters breakdown. The tool lumps everyone into college or non-college, so I just used an average of college and graduate degree, and an average of all the others to split the groups into two.

Some of the states that jump out to me are CT and OR. If I crank the number of college voters who will vote democrat up to D+16, CT and OR turn blue again.

I expect NH and ME to go republican this cycle based on early vote turnout and their demographic voting history. VA is going to be an absolute nailbiter according to early vote totals, but it looks like Trump has the margin to pull it off. Youngkin won VA when Dems had a 212k early vote advantage and beat McAuliffe by 64k votes. Right now the Dems have about a 250K early vote advantage, which is right on the margin of what Trump can win with, so it all comes down to turnout. I think Trump is going to take it. Independents will break for Trump and Democrat turnout is expected to be low compared to Republicans, if the national scene so far is any indication.

Needless to say, if Trump wins VA, the election is as good as over in the first few hours of the night.