The PollyVote team has conducted the fourth and final round of its state-level expert survey. According to the forecasts of 638 political scientists, Hillary Clinton will win 334 Electoral Votes, compared to 204 for Donald Trump.
This Electoral College prediction thus differs from the results of the previous survey round, when the experts’ aggregate forecast was that Clinton would gain 358 Electoral Votes, compared to 180 for Trump. The difference is due to Iowa and Ohio, which the experts now see leaning towards the Republicans. For Arizona, the experts predict essentially a pure tossup in both median winning probabilities and vote shares. However, since the average forecast for Clinton’s vote share is slightly above 50%, Arizona is called for the Democrats.
The following map visualizes the experts’ median estimates regarding Clinton’s chance of winning each state.
Nebraska and Maine deserve special attention, since these two states allocate two Electoral Votes to the popular vote winner plus one each to the popular vote winner in each Congressional district. The experts predict that all districts will go with the state-wide popular with two exceptions.
- In Nebraska’s 2nd district, the Democratic candidate is expected to win 51.0% of the two-party vote.
- In Maine’s 2nd district, the Republican candidate is expected to win the popular vote with a two-party vote share of 50.6%.
Method
We reached out to political scientists across the country and asked them two short questions:
- What share of the vote do you expect the nominees to receive in your home state?
- What do you think is Hillary Clinton’s chance of winning the election in your home state?
For experts who regard Nebraska or Maine as their home state, we additionally asked them to predict the outcome in each congressional district.
The survey was conducted from November 6 to 7. A total of 638 experts made estimates as requested. The number of experts by state ranged from 2 to 44. The table below shows the number of respondents per state as well as the median answer for each question.
Clinton’s predicted | |||
State | N | Chance of winning | Two-party vote |
District of Columbia | 16 | 100% | 90.4 |
Hawaii | 2 | 100% | 72.3 |
Vermont | 11 | 99% | 67.0 |
Maryland | 22 | 99% | 63.2 |
Massachusetts | 17 | 99% | 66.7 |
New York | 23 | 99% | 63.2 |
California | 21 | 99% | 62.4 |
Illinois | 23 | 99% | 57.9 |
Connecticut | 19 | 99% | 57.9 |
New Jersey | 4 | 99% | 58.5 |
Washington | 7 | 98% | 56.5 |
Oregon | 8 | 98% | 56.8 |
Delaware | 13 | 98% | 62.8 |
Rhode Island | 6 | 97% | 58.8 |
New Mexico | 4 | 97% | 53.0 |
Minnesota | 13 | 95% | 53.2 |
Maine | 8 | 90% | 53.7 |
Wisconsin | 14 | 89% | 52.7 |
Virginia | 44 | 85% | 52.7 |
Nevada | 8 | 85% | 52.4 |
Michigan | 12 | 83% | 51.6 |
Pennsylvania | 19 | 80% | 52.1 |
Colorado | 10 | 71% | 52.0 |
New Hampshire | 10 | 68% | 52.7 |
Florida | 19 | 55% | 50.6 |
North Carolina | 23 | 55% | 51.1 |
Arizona | 13 | 50% | 50.0 |
Ohio | 15 | 48% | 49.5 |
Iowa | 18 | 43% | 48.9 |
Alaska | 4 | 30% | 47.0 |
Georgia | 24 | 29% | 47.6 |
Missouri | 12 | 25% | 47.5 |
Utah | 15 | 15% | 44.4 |
South Carolina | 12 | 15% | 46.3 |
Kansas | 9 | 15% | 43.3 |
Alabama | 6 | 13% | 37.9 |
Indiana | 16 | 10% | 44.2 |
Texas | 22 | 10% | 45.7 |
Kentucky | 5 | 8% | 41.2 |
Montana | 5 | 5% | 41.6 |
South Dakota | 3 | 5% | 42.1 |
Louisiana | 8 | 5% | 43.2 |
North Dakota | 6 | 4% | 36.6 |
Arkansas | 8 | 3% | 41.1 |
Mississippi | 12 | 2% | 42.0 |
Idaho | 15 | 1% | 39.0 |
Tennessee | 5 | 1% | 42.1 |
West Virginia | 9 | 0% | 35.5 |
Nebraska | 5 | 0% | 42.1 |
Wyoming | 4 | 0% | 28.8 |
Oklahoma | 11 | 0% | 30.9 |