Map: A plausible Harris path to victory is to simply retain the mid-west states as noted above, with the thinnest possible margin of victory. If she loses the large mid-West prize Pennsylvania, she will have to pick up two more states at minimum not including Nevada – perhaps Arizona and Georgia.
Scenarios 3 and 4: A Republican or Democratic landslide
As of late August, neither landslide scenario seems plausible in what looks like a close race according to the polls, but as a thought experiment, let’s consider what a landslide might look like for either candidate – also seen in the light of a landslide victory to either party can be a very critical outcome as it hands the president a strong mandate for policy-making.
A Republican landslide isn’t necessary for Trump to exercise near-maximum power, because the Republicans are almost certain to retake the Senate even if Harris wins, while the House would likely fall in the direction of a clear popular vote outcome for either party. But a stronger general result for the Republicans would probably lead to a larger majority in the Senate, which would help Trump avoid single senators holding up new legislative efforts like Joe Manchin, the retiring Independent from West Virgina, held up Biden’s huge fiscal packages and forced them to rework them before he would vote in favour. Electorally, it is very hard to see the electoral college outcome expanding beyond Trump taking all seven swing states (312-226 in Trump’s favour), but such a landslide outcome could maybe mean Trump also secures Minnesota and maybe New Hampshire into play.
On the democratic side, a clean sweep of the swing states would mean a 319-219 victory for Harris. But pushing the general popular vote across the states just a few points in Harris’ favour relative to the 2020 results for Biden could suddenly see Florida (30 electoral votes) and even giant Texas (40 votes) into swinging for Harris. The swing states plus these two rich hauls would mean a 389-149 Harris landslide. With that kind of outcome, the Democrats would also likely take back the Senate, which looks very difficult to do otherwise.
Exotic scenarios: an Electoral College tie and/or a constitutional crisis?
Many have trotted out the idea ahead of this election that a very close result could see one of the sides refusing to accept the results of the election: the Republicans along the lines of Trump’s accusations of voting irregularities in 2020 and the situation that culminated with the storming of the Capitol by a rag-tag group on January 6, 2021, theoretically bent on stopping Vice President Pence from certifying the result of the election. On the Democratic side, on the other hand, an incredibly narrow result in the electoral vote could be accompanied by popular protests if Trump once again loses the popular vote, perhaps by 3% or more.
A tie scenario in the electoral votes (269-269) is theoretically possible in an unusual combination of swing state outcomes like Harris taking both Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, but losing all the mid-west states and Nevada. Otherwise, any exact tie outcome would require one of the 270-268 outcomes as shown above, plus perhaps the single Nebraska electoral vote that flipped for Biden in 2020 (Democratic majority of +6.5%) from Trump in 2016 (Republican majority of +2.24%) to revert to Trump.
Of course, there are rules in the event of an electoral college tie, but a tie would go in Trump’s favour because it would be settled by a vote of the states, with each state delegation in the House of Representatives casting a single vote, with the three Democratic Washington DC House members not eligible to cast a vote. Inevitably, Trump would win such a vote as he would have won more states in this tie scenario (28 of 50). Controversially, such an outcome would almost certainly be accompanied by Trump having lost the national popular vote by 2- or more percent, casting once again a negative light on the injustice of the Electoral College system, especially when the final tie-breaking decision would give, for example, 39 million Californians the same voting power as 600,000 Wyoming-ites via the one-vote-per-state system.
Footnotes
1 Florida is a very populous state with over 22 million people and has a whopping 30 Electoral votes of the nationwide total of 538 due to its population rise, up from 29 electoral votes in 2020 and only 25 as recently as 2000. Florida used to be the ultimate swing state, often having a very even partisan balance. The 2000 election was the most consequential example of its swing status, when Florida faced the embarrassing spectacle of recounting tattered paper ballots and “hanging chads” (partially punched out holes in ballots) after the first vote count showed a very close result. After multiple recounts and a month of paralysis, the state was given to George W. Bush by a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court. Bush’s margin of victory in Florida, which gave him the 271-266-1 majority in the Electoral College and thus the presidency, was a mere 537 votes, a mere 0.009% margin of victory over Gore. Nationwide, Gore beat Bush by a bit over half a million votes.