One of the most uncertain election battles of all time in the United States appears to be headed for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, just three 24 hours before the crucial vote. Even the pollsters, moreover, seem to be… throwing their hands up, as almost all polls give a lead to one candidate or the other, bordering on statistical error.
At the end of another tense week, which began with Trump’s racially charged rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden and… punctuated by counter-arguments, misogynistic comments and insults about “trash” hurled left and right, the Guardian’s 10-day average poll tracker showed little change from seven days earlier, with voters’ “loyalty” to their chosen candidate seeming relatively unaffected by the events of the campaign.
Nationally, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has a one-point lead, 48% to 47%, over her Republican opponent, nearly identical to last week’s lead. Such an advantage is within the margin of error of most polls.
The crucial states also remain in deadlock. Candidates are tied at 48% in Pennsylvania, often considered the most important state because it has the most electoral votes (19). Harris has a one-point lead in Michigan and Wisconsin, while Trump leads narrowly, by 1% in North Carolina and by 2% in Georgia and Arizona. In Nevada, his average lead in the polls is less than a percentage point.
According to Politico, which notes that more than 66 million people have already voted, it’s hard to predict anything about the early voting results. However, about 58% of early voters in Pennsylvania, aged 65 and older, were registered Democrats, compared to 35% of the same group who were registered Republicans. About 53% voted for Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020, even though he lost the state to Joe Biden.
Trump, unlike four years ago, encouraged his supporters to vote early. The fact that Democrats are turning out in larger numbers may be a positive sign for them in a benchmark state where commentators have predicted that turnout is key to the outcome. Democratic strategic analysts have argued that they have a 10%-20% lead in turnout among older voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The odds of victory
The simulator on polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight – based on a collection of national and state-by-state data – predicted Friday morning that Trump would win 53 times out of 100 to 47 for Harris, again similar to last week.
On the flip side, polls in Pennsylvania today, Saturday, led to Kamala Harris increasing her chances of being the next president by four percentage points, according to the Economist’s model. As it stands, the Democratic candidate is winning 52 times out of 100, while the Republican candidate is winning 48 out of 100.
Four point bump for Kamala Harris in today’s forecast update, mostly off the back of good polls in Pennsylvania https://t.co/z0eqOZEun6 pic.twitter.com/uX0TwwOyyJ
– Owen Winter (@OwenWntr) November 2, 2024
Of the eight pollsters who released surveys for Pennsylvania, the average result was a one-point lead for her, compared with a one-point lead for Donald Trump in yesterday’s projections. Her chances of winning the state increased from 45 to 50 out of 100.
And in a “burst” of positive news for Harris, a Marist poll on Friday showed her leading Trump by 3 percent in Michigan and Wisconsin and 2 percent in Pennsylvania. Winning all three states is likely to be Harris’ clearest path to the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House. But the results remained within the margins of statistical error.
The agony of pollsters
All of this uncertainty, of course, is even causing frustration among the pollsters themselves, who fear being proven wrong for the third time in a row after significantly underestimating Trump’s support in both 2016 and 2020.
Writing on NBC’s website, Josh Clinton, a professor of politics at Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, the network’s director of elections, wonder whether the “tied” race reflects not so much voter sentiment as voters’ fear of taking risks. They note, in fact, that some pollsters may be wary of findings that indicate an unusually large lead for one candidate or the other and introduce corrective weighting.
Of the last 321 polls, 124 have shown a lead of one point or less for Trump or Harris. Pennsylvania was the most “troubling” case, with 20 of 59 polls showing an exact tie, while another 26 showed margins of less than 1%…
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