Donald Trump's Massive Victory if Election Were Held Today

There is only one presidential candidate that would be able to find a path to the White House if the 2024 election was held today, according to two polls.

A Newsweek analysis using polling data to calculate the electoral college votes shows that former President Donald Trump would be elected to a second term if voters cast their ballots today.

With 270 electoral votes needed to win the election, Trump's current trajectory as the GOP frontrunner, combined with his lead over President Joe Biden in battleground states, puts him on track to win at least 285 electoral votes in 2024 race.

To calculate the winner of the presidential contest, Newsweek began analyzing which candidate would win the electoral votes of each state using the most up-to-date projections from 270toWin, giving Trump the states that would be safe in GOP hands or likely/leans Republican and handing Biden the ones that would be safe/likely/leans Democratic.

That left five battleground states up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. To determine the winner in each of those states, Newsweek then factored in the most recent averages from RealClearPolling (RCP) to calculate the total electoral vote count.

Looking just at the states that would likely go to Trump or Biden, Trump would secure 233 electoral votes while Biden would win 239.

Trump would carry Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Florida (30), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (4), Nebraska (3), North Carolina (16), North Dakota (3), Ohio (17), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (40), Utah (6), West Virginia (4) and Wyoming (3).

Biden would take California (54), Colorado (10), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (19), Oregon (8), Maine (2), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Michigan (15), Minnesota (10), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (28), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (12) and Washington D.C. (3).

That leaves 62 electoral votes among Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump is currently leading in all the key swing states except for Wisconsin, where he and Biden are tied. So, if the 2024 election was held today, Trump would add another 52 votes, sending him over the 270 threshold with 285 electoral votes.

Even if Biden won Wisconsin's 10 electoral college votes, he would only have 249 votes, 21 votes shy of the must-win figure. With a disadvantage that large, Biden would need to win at least two of those four states (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania) to be reelected.

His greatest chance would be in Pennsylvania, where Trump is only ahead by a single percentage point, according to the state's RCP average. With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania has the highest number of electoral votes of the four states, but Biden would still be short two votes.

Finding a second battleground state to carry would be a little more difficult given Trump's advantage. Biden's second-best option would be Nevada's six votes, but the Republican is currently leading in the Silver State by four points. If Biden wins Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada, he could win with 274 electoral votes.

However, there is still more bad news for Biden, who just four years ago won all five swing states. Although 270toWin projects the incumbent as the winner of Michigan's 15 votes, the latest RCP data shows that Trump is leading the president in the Great Lake State by 4.8 points. If Michigan goes to Trump, he would not need Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin. The former president would still have 275 electoral votes and be declared the winner of the election.

Biden is seeing increasingly worrisome news out of Michigan, where Arab American voters are souring on the president over his response to the Israel-Hamas war. The state is home to 200,000 Muslim voters and 300,000 voters who claim ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa. Michigan was also critical to Biden's 2020 victory. The president defeated Trump by about 154,000 votes in the last presidential election.

"Democrats need to stop telling Arab Americans to vote for the 'lesser of two evils' and that we're 'helping trump' by not voting for Biden. The only one helping Trump right now is Biden & his support for genocide," Adam Abusalah, a Michigan-based activist, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, last week. "'[L]esser of two evils' argument doesn't work, they're both evil."

Biden's response to the war has also driven away some young voters, who were instrumental to his 2020 win. A New York Times/Siena College poll released last month found that the majority of Americans, 57 percent, disapprove of his response to the conflict, with that number going up to 72 percent among voters under 30.

Newsweek has contacted representatives of Biden and Trump via email for comment.