Public polling shows an improbably tight race for the White House, with former President Trump and Vice President Harris effectively tied heading into Election Day.
That could portend a drawn out and contentious vote counting process — or the race could be called early, as a tiny polling error in one direction could set one candidate or the other up for a battlegrounds sweep and a convincing Electoral College victory.
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If the polls undercount Trump’s support by the same margins they did in 2020, he’d likely win every swing state.
- If the polls undercount Democratic support by the same margins they did in the 2022 House and Senate elections, Harris would win most or all of the battlegrounds.
Nate Silver’s latest forecast finds Trump's slight advantage eroding in the past few days, effectively bringing the odds for each candidate to 50-50.
The Hill/Decision Desk HQ model gives Trump a 53 percent chance of victory, which is essentially equivalent to a coin toss:
National: Harris +0.1
AZ: Trump +2.3
GA: Trump +1.8
MI: Harris +0.6
NC: Trump +1.4
NV: Trump +1.3
PA: Trump +0.7
WI: Trump +0.2
The broader election narrative in the final days of the race has tilted toward Harris, with Trump ensconced in ugly controversies and a shocking Des Moines Register poll finding Harris with a 3 point lead in Iowa.
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Did comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist joke about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally break through? A new Univision/YouGov survey taken after that controversy finds Harris with a wide lead among Latinos in Pennsylvania.
- The Des Moines Register poll sent shockwaves through the political world. Still, few believe that Harris will win Iowa — an Emerson poll released the same day found Trump with a 10 point lead.
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However, Ann Selzer’s polls have generally hit the mark, while doubling as a useful regional forecast. In 2016 and 2020, the Des Moines Register polls picked up on Trump’s support among the white working class voters that broke his way across the Midwest and Rust Belt.
This time around, Selzer’s poll finds women — and in particular older women — breaking in huge numbers for Harris.
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Selzer said the women she polled are animated by the issue of abortion. Iowa’s six-week abortion ban finally went into affect over the summer after being tied up in the courts.
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The Des Moines Register poll raised the possibility of Harris’s support among a “silent” contingent that are being undercounted in the polls. According to NPR, some conservative women have kept their support for Harris a secret.
Of course, the Trump campaign knows the "silent" voter phenomenon all too well, as pollsters undercounted his supporters in both 2016 and 2020.
The New York Times polling analyst Nate Cohn wrote over the weekend:
"Across these final polls, white Democrats were 16 percent likelier to respond than white Republicans. That’s a larger disparity than our earlier polls this year, and it’s not much better than our final polls in 2020 — even with the pandemic over. It raises the possibility that the polls could underestimate Mr. Trump yet again.”
That begs the question of turnout.
Republicans have embraced early voting in 2024 after Trump warned against it in 2020.
This has led to a surge of early voting among Republicans, that has some Democrats worried.
“Early vote numbers are a little scary,” said Jim Messina, a top adviser to former President Obama’s campaigns.
The Trump campaign touted the GOP's early voting turnout in a memo from chief data consultant Tim Saler on Monday:
"Democrats are spinning themselves and reporters by claiming that their voters will turn out on Election Day when polls show otherwise and, most importantly, that’s asking Democrat voters to do something they have absolutely no history of doing. If Democrats, who historically vote ahead of Election Day, haven’t been motivated to show up for Kamala yet, why do we expect them to show up tomorrow?
The big question that won’t be answered until tomorrow is whether the GOP’s early voting is cannibalizing the party's Election Day turnout.
The Nevada Independent’s Jon Ralston, who knows the state’s elections better than anyone, is forecasting a Harris victory in Nevada despite the GOP’s massive early turnout advantage in the state.
"There are a lot of nonpartisans who are closet Democrats who were purposely registered by Democrat-aligned groups as nonpartisans. The machine knows who they are and will get them to vote. It will be just enough to overcome the Republican lead – along with women motivated by abortion and crossover votes that issue also will cause."
