On November 5, U.S. voters will cast their ballots to choose the country’s next president. The election was supposed to be a repeat of the 2020 election, but President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race and his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris in July turned the tables.
The crucial question is whether Donald Trump will get a second term or whether Harris will become America’s first female president.
All eyes will be on Harris and Trump as they face off in their first presidential debate today.
Before Biden’s decision to drop out of the race, the polls were always on Trump’s side. Numerous polls at the time suggested that Harris would not do much better. However, once she began her campaign, the competition became tougher and she had a small lead over her opponent in the average of national polls.
According to a series of polls conducted before Tuesday night’s election, the race between the two presidential candidates is neck and neck.
A look at the latest polls
New York Times/Sienna College poll
The latest New York Time/Sienna College poll, released Sunday, shows Trump ahead of Harris, 48% to 47%. The poll surveyed 1,695 registered voters between September 3 and 6. It’s important to note, however, that the poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points, which is larger than the gap between the two candidates.
According to the poll, voters still feel they need to know more about Harris. While only 9 percent of potential voters surveyed have that opinion about Trump, 28 percent said they wanted more information about the Democratic candidate.
Washington Post poll
According to the Washington Post poll, Harris is ahead in three of the seven swing states that are most likely to decide the outcome of the election. She leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, while Trump is narrowly ahead in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.
The Washington Post’s election data feeds into polls at the state and national levels, which consider the results of each state’s last two presidential elections to determine the candidate voters support.
Emerson College survey
According to an Emerson College poll, Harris is ahead of Donald Trump by a narrow margin of 49% to 47%. While three percent of voters are unsure, one percent would like to vote for another candidate, the poll says.
Morning Consult survey
According to the results of their daily monitoring survey of potential voters, Harris is ahead of Trump by 49 percent to 46 percent in a new poll by the business news service Morning Consult.
FiveThirtyEight poll
According to the latest poll from FiveThirtyEight, a website specializing in political, economic and opinion polls, Harris leads Trump by a narrow margin in a national poll released Monday. Harris leads Trump by 47.1 percent to 44.3 percent.
YouGov survey
According to a YouGov poll released on Sunday, Harris is narrowly ahead of Trump in Michigan (50-49%) and Wisconsin (51-49%), but there is a stalemate between the two candidates in Pennsylvania.
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Harris vs. Trump: Who will win in the swing states?
On his way to the presidency in 2016, Trump swept Democratic strongholds Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin red. Biden swept them again in 2020; if Harris can do the same this year, victory will be in her hands.
On the day Biden withdrew from the campaign, he was trailing Trump by an average of nearly five percentage points in those seven swing states, reflecting how the race has evolved since Harris emerged as the Democratic challenger.
Harris vs. Trump: Can voters trust the polls?
Currently, polls suggest that Trump and Harris are tied by a few percentage points nationally and in swing states. With such a close race, it is extremely difficult to determine the winner.
Polls underestimated Trump’s support in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. Pollsters will try to address this problem in several ways. One of them will be to ensure that their results accurately reflect the demographic makeup of the electorate.
