Who is leading in the polls?
With just one day to go until the 2024 US presidential election and more than 77 million votes already cast, polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by a narrow 48%-47%.
US Vice President Kamala Harris leads by 8% among those who have already voted, while former President Donald Trump leads among those who say they are likely to vote but have not yet voted.
One of the most shocking polls of the weekend was in Iowa, conducted by the Des Moines Register, according to the Telegraph.
The shocking poll shows Harris leading by 3 points in a state that Trump won in both 2016 and 2020. Iowa is also a state that has leaned heavily Republican in recent years.
Trump expressed anger about the above results, while advisers repeatedly told him that the Iowa poll was inaccurate and affirmed that the former President always had an advantage in this battleground state.
Last ditch effort
Harris and Trump are making every effort on the final day of campaigning on November 4.
Harris campaigned in Pennsylvania, the battleground state with the largest number of electoral votes, trying to boost turnout in the urban population centers she needs to win.
Meanwhile, Trump will make a last-minute blitz in states that could return him to the White House.
He will start the day with a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, before flying to Pennsylvania, where he will deliver a speech around the same time as Harris.
Historian Correctly Predicted 9 Out of the Last 10 Elections
Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian who has correctly predicted nine of the last 10 elections, predicted ahead of the November 5 vote that Kamala Harris would win.
The system, which he calls “Keys to the White House,” has a 13-point checklist for calculating results and does not include any polling.
Some of the factors he considers include social unrest, the economic situation and whether the incumbent has faced scandals during his time in office.
According to the historian, US election polls are unreliable because people “lie, change their minds, and pollsters have to guess who is likely to vote.”
What pollsters are "missing"
Alex Castellanos, a pollster who worked for the campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, said he believes pollsters are missing a key factor when determining whether Trump or Harris is ahead.
Castellanos said a “massive shift” in voter registration, largely in the Republican direction, was not adequately accounted for.
“Thirty-one states have party-based voter registration, 30 of them in the last four years have seen a shift to the Republican Party. I think it’s a small wave that’s tilting toward the Republican Party,” he told Fox News.
Why are battleground states important?
The battleground state is one where both major parties have similar levels of support among voters — with Democrats and Republicans separated by just a few percentage points in polls.
In this presidential race, the key states could be Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 in 6/7 of the above states, giving him a lead to win the final White House.
Even a narrow win in these battleground states could influence the overall outcome and be crucial in securing the presidency.
