With Harris gaining in the polls, a look at how the electoral map has changed

As the two newly-cemented tickets continue to make their case to voters, the recent shake-ups in the race have led to a reshuffling of the electoral math to win. The Cook Political Report is out with updated ratings for the presidential race, moving the three battleground states of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada from lean Republican to toss-up. Amna Nawaz discussed the latest with Amy Walter.

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As the two newly cemented tickets continue to make their case to voters, the recent shakeups in the race have led to a reshuffling of the electoral math needed to win. The Cook Political Report is out with updated ratings for the presidential race, moving the three battleground states of Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, from lean Republican to toss-up.

Amna Nawaz: In this new assessment, there are now six states and 77 electoral votes up for grabs.

Amy Walter is editor in chief of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and, of course, a member of our “News Hour” family.

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report: Hello.

Amna Nawaz: Good to see you, Amy.

Amy Walter: Glad to be here.

Amna Nawaz: So let’s talk about your analysis today. You wrote this.

You said — quote — “Things look a lot better for Democrats today than they did a few weeks ago, but Trump is looking stronger now than he did in 2020.”

Explain that to us. What are you seeing now in the race and in the polling?

Amy Walter: That’s right. If you think about this from where we were when Biden was in this race, so in the pre-July 21 world, if we think about this as a contest, as a game, the contest was very lopsided against Biden.

He was behind by a significant number, not just at the national popular vote, but in those individual states, those individual battleground states. You can see almost six points in a state like Georgia and Nevada.

Now, just in the time that Harris has been in the race, you have seen those numbers move pretty significantly toward Harris, again, four- or five-point shifts in those battleground states, which is mirroring what we’re seeing in the national poll as well. It hasn’t turned those states, though, from once that favored Trump to once that now favor Harris.

It just means now that the race is no longer as lopsided in Trump’s favor as it was, say, in late July, as it is today, which is why we’re calling this race a toss-up.

Geoff Bennett: So we have got three months left until the election. What do Harris/Walz or Trump/Vance need to do to really shift this race in their favor? What voters are key to that?

Amy Walter: Well, I think the most important thing to talk about is what has happened in the three weeks since Kamala Harris got into this contest.

If you think about where we were before that, think about Republicans as a football team and they had every single member of their team on the field. And Democrats were a football team where maybe like 70 percent of their members were on the field.

Now what’s happened with Harris, the enthusiasm, the energy, the shots you showed from where she’s campaigning in these battleground states means that both teams now have everybody on the field, which means this is a battle of inches, not of yards. They are both lined up. They’re evenly matched teams, where it could be anything from a fumble from one side that wins the game to one candidate getting a surge at the end.

But I do think, look, the battle right now, it was in your piece that you introduced the show with. It’s the battle to define the Harris/Walz ticket. They are not particularly well-known. Even the vice president isn’t as well-known. The one benefit she is getting is I think a lot of folks assumed, because she was the vice president, she would come in with all the same baggage that Biden had.

Instead, we have seen her favorable numbers shift 10 points in — more favorably than they were before then. She was much more tied to opinions of Biden than she is today. That’s the good news for her.

But, as you can see, Republicans are trying to fill in those gaps themselves, calling her dangerously liberal. They have ads up going after her, specifically on things like the border, but also police reform and her opinions on some of those issues where she moved to the left in some cases during the 2020 campaign.

So I think, for the next, let’s call it — more so after the — the DNC is where she gets a chance to tell her story. After that, it’s still Republicans trying to make the case about who they would like voters to see her as.

Amna Nawaz: So, Amy, with Harris now seeing a bump over where President Biden was, what are the downballot implications for that, especially in some of those Senate races you have talked about before where we know Democrats are really fighting to hold on in tough states?

Amy Walter: That’s right.

Remember when we were watching this dance of, is Biden going to stay and is Biden going to get out, and the number of candidates who started to come out? We saw that number start to ratchet up, especially in some of these states where voters knew that a decreased enthusiasm would mean that they too would find fewer voters coming and turning out.

Their overall numbers haven’t changed. What has changed, I think, is that they feel more confident that the voters they know are already for them will show up. What they were worried about is that the voters who were for the Senate candidates were not excited about Biden, and so they may have stayed home.

Geoff Bennett: And we’re seeing the impact of that with some of these Democratic Senate candidates in these battleground states.

Amy Walter: Yes, when we were all at the RNC, and right before that, you had President Biden come into the state of Wisconsin, and not a lot of the folks who were up — Senator Tammy Baldwin, for example, Democrat there, she did not appear with Biden. Candidate in Michigan running for the Senate also didn’t want to appear with Biden.

They are more than happy to appear with Harris now.

Geoff Bennett: Amy Walter, thanks, as always. Great to see you.

Amy Walter: Great to see you.