Is Harris beating Trump in the polls?

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It's the last day before Vice President Kamala Harris takes on Donald Trump as Americans cast their ballots in the 2024 election.

With nearly 75 million votes already cast, the polls will close at the end of Tuesday, November 5th and the votes will be counted to decide the next president.

The latest national polls still show a neck-and-neck race between the two candidates. some with a small Harris lead, others with a small Trump lead.

A surprise result in Iowa suggests Harris may have a chance to flip the Trump-favorable state, while recent swing state polls show mixed results.

Nearly 100 electoral votes are too close; So how will Harris and Trump fare tomorrow?

The latest average of national polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight shows Harris with a one-point lead over Trump. On average, Harris was narrowly ahead of Trump, but that gap has narrowed significantly in the last month. Therefore, Tuesday's results are likely to be very close and difficult to predict in advance.

An unexpected new survey from the Des Moines Register and Mediacom in Iowa projects Harris leading Trump in the state 47 percent to 44 percent.

Trump has done well in Iowa during his two campaigns, and this would be a surprising loss. Iowa, considered a likely Republican victory, has six electoral votes.

In response to the poll, Trump spoke sharply during a rally on Sunday, calling it “oppression.” “They are oppressing, and it should actually be illegal,” he stressed.

It should be noted that the 3-point lead is just within the poll's margin of error.

Swing states

The latest polls are out in the swing states The New York Times/Siena College shows a mixed picture.

In five states, both candidates are less than two points apart among likely voters, making it impossible to predict a win at this point.

At Nevada, Harris has a 3-point lead, just within the margin of error.

Meanwhile, Trump has built a 4-point lead in Arizona, beyond the margin of error.

The Grand Canyon State has voted Republican in every election this century except 2020, when Biden won by just 0.3 percent.

Although it's not surprising that the state is falling back into the red, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake is doing comparatively poorly in the polls.

There are 93 Electoral College votes on the table between the seven contested states.

The Independent's analysis of the Electoral College confirms that none of the candidates can reach the 270-vote threshold without swing states.

Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral votes, has been a major focus for both Trump and Harris this election. Candidates made several stops there each month, and billionaire Elon Musk's dubious giveaway was intended to mobilize voters in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania flipped to Trump in 2016, but in 2020 President Biden retook his home state. Both wins were by just a few percentage points, meaning all eyes are on the state this year.

National shutdown

Polls released last week show mixed results: some have Harris ahead, others have Trump in the lead, others have a tie.

However, no polls show margins of more than a few points outside the margin of error, meaning the candidates are effectively at an impasse.

This could spell bad news for Democrats, who have won a majority of the vote in the last eight elections (except 2004, when George W. Bush was re-elected).

With the Republican Party enjoying an advantage in the Electoral College, such close statewide numbers could worry the Harris campaign.

Demographics

Unlike previous polls that showed a double-digit lead for Harris among younger generations, a HarrisX poll from late October suggests that young voters are divided between both candidates.

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Women and Americans from non-white backgrounds show the strongest support for Harris, while white and male voters make up Trump's main base.

The gender gap between both candidates, with more men supporting Trump and women supporting Harris, does not appear to be as drastic in this poll.

Black voters

Although there has been little to no movement in the polls overall, one key group has changed over the past month: black men under 50.

A new poll from the NAACP found that black men have solidified their support for Harris after an earlier poll showed nearly three in 10 would vote for Trump.

Support for Harris among men under 50 has risen from 51 percent last month to 59 percent now, according to a poll of 1,000 black voters.

Support for Trump fell from 27 percent to 21 percent over the same period.

Although there is some evidence that black men are leaning toward Trump, this does not appear to be the case on a large scale; and what's more, according to Pew Research, this group represents only 6 to 7 percent of eligible voters.

However, the NAACP poll also shows that 73 percent of all black voters support Harris; a far cry from the 90 percent support for Biden in 2020 and 93 percent for Obama in 2008.

That's a 10 percent increase from the same NAACP poll last month, but reflects some hesitancy among a demographic key to Democrats.

Key issues for swing voters

The economy is consistently at the top of the list of most important issues for voters this election.

The Washington Post A poll of swing-state voters also found that health care and threats to democracy topped the list of factors in choosing the next president.

Although Trump has pushed for an overhaul of Obamacare, with attempts unsuccessful during his presidency, he failed to present an alternative health care policy at the presidential debate in September.

Immigration is a crucial factor in this election and in exclusive polls for it The Independent shows that candidates' immigration policies matter deeply to Latino voters.

Interestingly, climate change is low on the priority list for swing state voters this year.

Climate change was barely on the agenda in this election, with Harris and Walz largely silent on the issue and Trump-Vance actively pursuing climate denial.

With the recent devastating hurricanes, climate change has once again come to the fore; although Trump incorrectly stated in a speech on October 1 that “the planet has actually gotten a little cooler lately.”

Red states

Emerson College polls from last month confirm Trump is leading in the red states of Texas and Florida.

Trump's 7 or 8 point lead is weaker than predicted at the beginning of the year; Still, the poll shows that women in Florida support Trump (49 percent) more than Harris (47 percent), a victory for the Republican campaign, which has lost votes across the country.

While it's very likely that both states will remain in the red, the Senate race is a different question.

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In Texas, where former presidential candidate Ted Cruz is defending his Senate seat, Democrat Colin Allred is just one point behind, creating a virtual tiebreaker.

According to an internal memo discussed below, this gave Republicans cause for concern.

Independent voters in Texas prefer Allred (47 percent) to Cruz (42 percent). In the presidential race, they lean more toward Trump than Harris by a two-point margin.

In Florida, incumbent GOP Sen. Rick Scott is just four points ahead of Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, with 8 percent of voters still undecided.

GOP problems in the Senate race

According to an internal polling report, Republicans are now worried about the Senate elections received from Politically.

The memo shows that Republicans' own polls show their candidates trailing Democrats in seven of nine key Senate seats, data largely confirmed by public polls. These seats are in Arizona, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“We still have that a lot of work what we must do to maximize our gains in this crucial Senate election (…) We must do it too guard our flanks” writes the memo's author, Steven Law, head of the Senate Leadership Fund.

The memo also warns that strongholds like Nebraska and Texas could be at risk from independent and Democratic candidates.

“We are putting everything we can into this fight – so there is no looking back with regret,” the memo ends.

Who will vote?

A YouGov/economist The poll has Harris with a three-point lead among registered voters at 47 percent and Trump at 44 percent. The poll shows Harris with a large 25-point lead among young voters aged 29 and younger.

However, according to the same survey, younger generations are also the least likely to vote: 13 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed say they “maybe” will vote, while 3 percent will not vote or are still unsure.

That's 16 percent of voters undecided or not voting, more than any other age group and higher than the average of 9 percent. Only 65 percent of the 18 to 29 year olds surveyed said they would definitely vote in November.

This compares to 77 percent of those aged 30 to 44, 85 percent of those aged 45 to 64 and 94 percent of those aged 65+.

Although the numbers may seem bleak and reflect a degree of reluctance among younger voters, the overall picture is significantly more engaged than in 2020.

The same YouGov/economist A poll at this point in the 2020 presidential election found that nearly a third of young people (27 percent) were not interested in voting, with 10 percent “maybe” voting and 17 percent “definitely/probably” not voting.