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FILE PHOTO: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. August 20, 2024 and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., August 15, 2024 are seen in a combination of file photographs.
Less than six weeks from Election Day, current polls suggest a razor-thin margin in the race for the White House. Aggregations of national polls (see examples here, here, and here) show a lead for Vice President Kamala Harris of 2-3 points. That’s small comfort for her campaign since most of the polling results that make up these aggregations are within their margins of error, and because national polls offer an imperfect estimate of the electoral college outcome. Harris knows that George W. Bush (2000) and her opponent, Donald Trump (2016), both won elections despite losing the popular vote.
That’s why both campaigns and most major polling firms are focused on the seven states that will decide the winner: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona. Neither candidate needs all these states to win, but the latest polls show tiny advantages for Harris in the first four states and minuscule leads for Trump in the others.
If the margins remain this close, the election will be decided by “undecided” voters. It’s important to remember that in most cases, these voters are undecided between the candidate they prefer and the choice not to vote, rather than being torn between the two candidates.
