Latest polls show Harris and Trump heading for a photo finish

• The final polls for the 2024 presidential election season are available.
• They show that neither Harris nor Trump made a breakthrough in the swing states.
• Nationally, the candidates also remain almost equal.

This year's electoral map has been fixed for a long time.

Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will likely determine whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump wins.

The poll numbers in these seven states have been close to one another for months. And nothing has changed with 24 hours to go.

The latest set of New York Times/Siena College polls in each state found Harris narrowly ahead among likely voters in Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, while Harris and Trump are tied in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In Arizona, Trump has a four-point lead over Harris.

Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina are all states in the Sun Belt where the economy is growing particularly strongly. When President Joe Biden was still the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he had fallen behind Trump in Georgia and Nevada, but Harris quickly made those states competitive.

In Georgia, Harris leads 48% to 47%, according to the Times poll. It has slightly larger advantages in North Carolina (48% to 46%) and Nevada (49% to 46%).

Black voters will be crucial in Georgia and North Carolina, where they make up a significant share of the electorate. Biden won Georgia by a razor-thin margin in 2020, while Trump narrowly won North Carolina this year.

In Georgia, more than 4 million voters cast early ballots, and just over a million of those voters were Black, according to data from Georgia's secretary of state's office. And in North Carolina – where Democrats have not won at the presidential level since Barack Obama won in 2008 – there has been a concerted effort to boost turnout in the party's strongholds of the Charlotte and Raleigh areas.

Latino voters will be critical in Nevada, where issues such as housing affordability and inflation are driving the political debate and giving Trump hope that he can turn around the state, which has not supported a Republican presidential candidate since George W. Bush in 2004 .

Among the northern “blue wall” states that are particularly critical for Harris, there is still no clear leader in the battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania.

In Wisconsin, Harris leads 49% to 47%, while Michigan (47% to 47%) and Pennsylvania (48% to 48%) were both tied in the Times poll. Harris has worked to win the support of blue-collar, minority and union voters in these areas. Trump has sought to draw some of these voters into his column, aware that any small shift in their support could prove crucial in an already close race.

Biden won all three Blue Wall battlegrounds in 2020.

Some Democrats fear Trump could gain a foothold in the Midwest again, as he did in 2016, but the new Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll showed Harris with a three-point lead in Republican-heavy Iowa, suggesting a good The vice president's performance could indicate strong support for the Blue Wall.

In Arizona, where Latino voters will again play a key role, the former president's four-point lead is the largest among the seven states surveyed by the Times.

Arizonans consistently cite the economy and immigration as two of their top issues – which are more likely to vote for Trump in the polls – but democracy concerns and reproductive rights are also top issues for voters. And the latter two subjects are of great use to Harris.

There is also a generational gap in Arizona that is currently helping Trump in a state that Biden narrowly won in 2020.

In the Times/Siena poll of likely Arizona voters, Harris was ahead among voters ages 18 to 29 (55% to 41%) and 30 to 44 (50% to 44%), but Trump was ahead among voters Voters aged 45 to 64 (53% to 42%) and 65 and older (51% to 43%) came out on top.

The gender gap in swing states, meanwhile, reflects the deep divide in national polls. According to the latest NBC News poll, Harris is winning female voters by 16 points (57% to 41%). Among male voters, Trump had an 18-point lead (58% to 40%).

And with the candidates tied among registered voters in the latest NBC poll (49% to 49%), it could ultimately come down to who votes in larger numbers, women or men.

Women have so far outvoted men in early voting in swing states, but it remains unclear whether that trend will continue through Election Day.