Less than 24 hours before the opening of polling stations for the American presidential election, polls show that the distance between Democrats and Republicans is very small. The race is particularly tight in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, where polls show a tie heading into the election.
The margin is so fair that there could even be the paradox of Kamala Harris winning the popular vote and losing the November 5 election, if Donald Trump – who has closed the gap on the Democrat – wins in key states which gave him a majority in the elections. the Electoral College and, therefore, the keys to the White House.
According to polls, Michigan and Wisconsin favor Harris, but by less than a percentage point. These are key states of Rust belt (in Spanish, rust belt) which gave Trump the presidency in 2016. Now, the Democratic candidate is just 0.78 and 0.83 points ahead respectively in these territories. Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina are leaning further and further toward Trump.
On the other hand, in Nevada and Pennsylvania, the two candidates are still very tied. The Republican is 0.18 points above Harris in Pennsylvania, the key state that distributes the most votes to the Electoral College (19 total), the body responsible for electing the president.
The Electoral College is made up of 538 delegates. To win, one of the candidates must receive at least 270 votes. Delegates are distributed by state and the winning party in each territory wins the entire number of delegates allocated to that state, except in Maine (4) and Nebraska (5), where the system is proportional. With these two exceptions, it doesn’t matter whether you win a state by one vote or by a million: if you win, you win all the electoral votes in that state, and the loser in that state gets nothing.
The polls currently present a very tight scenario, with an increasingly slim lead for Kamala Harris. In the following chart you can see how they are based on the average of surveys published by FiveThirtyEight, which aggregates different surveys and gives a different weight by date, sample size, methodology, transparency or bias of each polling station.
Harris leads the total vote received nationally (called the popular vote), with an advantage of just 0.9 points over Trump. Harris has been rising in the polls since entering the presidential race last August against Joe Biden, still president, although the gap has narrowed in recent weeks. A month ago, there was a difference of up to three points.
The following map shows the victory forecasts for each candidate, according to the FiveThirtyEight model, which takes into account not only the polls but also the voting history, economic and social data of each state to simulate the victory probabilities of each candidate .
According to this model, victory in the 2024 elections will be decided in the seven key states. Currently, the model gives an undecided result in four of them and very close in favor of Trump in the other three.
Among the most contested states, the Democratic candidate would need to win Nevada and Wisconsin, in addition to Michigan, to reach the electoral majority of 270 electoral votes.
The following table provides a summary of poll developments in the seven tightest states that will decide the 2024 elections in the United States.
Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are three swing states. It’s possible that Harris could win the White House without them, although that would be a very difficult scenario. Trump’s victory in Georgia and North Carolina is not guaranteed, while in Arizona he has more than two and a half points ahead of his opponent. For now, Pennsylvania continues to be seen as the place that will have the last word and in this state, Trump managed to place first in the polls on the eve of the election.
