The presidential race appears to be hurtling toward a photo finish, with the final set of polls by The New York Times and Siena College finding Vice-President Kamala Harris showing new strength in North Carolina and Georgia as former president Donald Trump erases her lead in Pennsylvania and maintains his advantage in Arizona. It has been decades since the polls have shown the nation facing a presidential race that is so close across so many states in both the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt. The tightly contested landscape means the race remains highly uncertain as the campaign enters its final hours.
Harris is now narrowly ahead in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, the polls show, while Trump leads in Arizona. The polls show them locked in close races in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. But the results in all seven states are within the margin of sampling error, meaning neither candidate has a definitive lead in any of them.
Both candidates have multiple pathways available to capture the 270 Electoral College votes required to claim victory, assuming that polls are not dramatically underestimating the support for one or the other. In such a close race, even a small systemic polling error could tip the contest decisively in either direction. But there are signs that late deciders are breaking for Harris: Among the 8% of voters who said they had only recently decided on their vote, she wins the group by 55% to 44%.
Trump has been gaining ground in Pennsylvania, where Harris had a 4-percentage-point edge in all previous Times/Siena polls in the state since she entered the race. The race is now tied, indicating an increasingly competitive contest in the state, which strategists in both campaigns believe could tip the election.
Rates of early voting are particularly high in North Carolina, where more than half the voters said they had cast a ballot. Harris wins early voters in the state by 8 percentage points, perhaps contributing to her 3-percentage-point edge in the survey of the state. Despite recent devastation there from Hurricane Helene, more than 9 out of 10 North Carolina voters said that the storm and its aftermath have had no impact on their ability to vote. The only state where the poll found Trump winning with people who said they had voted was Arizona. Forty-six per cent of voters there said they had voted, and Trump wins that group, 50% to 46%.
The polls also reveal a shift in the issues being prioritised by voters in the final stretch of the race. The economy still remains their top concern but in states like Wisconsin. And in Arizona, where Trump leads, immigration also continues to rise as a crucial issue driving voters’ choices.
The survey shows that Trump has continued to hold on to the core of the coalition that supported him in his past two presidential bids — white voters who did not attend college, and men — while expanding his support among younger, non-white and newer voters. He is exceeding his 2020 vote share in Arizona and Michigan, both states he did not win four years ago.
Harris is underperforming relative to President Joe Biden’s performance in 2020 with younger voters, Black voters, particularly Black women, and Latino voters. But she has improved on his numbers with these groups since he dropped out of the race in July. The gender gap remains wide across all seven states, with Harris the favourite of women and Trump preferred by men. — NYT
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