Vice President Kamala Harris is currently in a tighter race than President Joe Biden or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were at this juncture in the 2020 and 2016 elections.
As early voting ramps up across several crucial battleground states, the contest between Harris and former President Donald Trump has shown to be particularly close. With just over two weeks until Election Day, neither candidate holds a decisive advantage.
This scenario diverges from the 2020 and 2016 elections, where Biden and Clinton experienced more comfortable polling leads over Trump. Notably, Clinton lost in the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote by a wider margin than the final results reflected.
Recent data from FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics indicates Harris is slightly ahead of Trump as of Monday.
FiveThirtyEight’s numbers suggest Harris leads by 1.7 points, with 48.1% of voters favoring her compared to Trump’s 46.4%. Meanwhile, RealClearPolitics has her leading by 1 point, with an average support of 49.2% versus Trump’s 48.2%.
On this date in 2020, Biden was ahead of Trump by an average of 9.9 points according to FiveThirtyEight, while Clinton had a 6.2-point lead at the same time in 2016.
Biden ultimately won the popular vote by 4.5 points, whereas Clinton won by 2.1 points but lost key battleground states.
If the polling inaccuracies seen in previous years resurface in 2024, it might spell trouble for Harris. However, experts caution that such polling errors aren’t necessarily repeatable year to year, as methodologies have been updated since 2020 for better accuracy.
For context, during the 2012 election, polls overestimated Republican support, showing Obama with a slim lead shortly before the election. He eventually won by a 3.9-point margin in the popular vote.
While Harris maintains a slim lead in popular support, how this translates to swing states crucial for the Electoral College remains uncertain.
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll conducted from October 14 to October 18 shows Harris leading Trump by 1 point, 45% to 44%, with third-party candidates capturing around 3% of the vote. This poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 points.
A separate poll from the Washington Post across seven key battleground states revealed a similar trend, with Harris ahead by 1 point overall. She leads in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Trump leads Arizona and North Carolina, and Nevada is in a tie.
This poll, conducted from September 30 to October 15 with 5,016 likely voters, carries a margin of error of +/- 1.7 points.
As the campaign enters its final phases, both Harris and Trump will focus on these vital states, aiming to sway undecided voters and rally their bases to vote. Notably, North Carolina has experienced significant early voter turnout already.