This is how Harris has lost half of her slim margin over Trump

The Democratic Party has been consistently ahead in this entire election race. Always by a slight margin, so much so that just before Joe Biden’s resignation, Donald Trump managed to reach the same height. With the appointment of Kamala Harris to represent in the elections starting in August, because there are always delays – the process from collecting data to publishing takes several days – Democratic candidates have been ahead all the time. Although by a slight margin. Even today he has more chances, but he has lost half of the profit he had two months ago.

Daily monitoring of ‘fivethirtyeighth.com’

If we go to the special page www. Following analyzes from fivethertyeight.com, which publishes projected percentages every day as new polls are added to its database, the Democratic candidate is currently 1.8 points ahead of the Republican. Those seem like subtle moves, but the gain in the third week of August was exactly double (3.6).

Nate Silver, once the founder of this online portal, now owned by ABC News, was one of the few to predict Trump’s victory in 2016, making him one of the most recognized analysts. Experienced in the statistical study of baseball, his ‘Silver Bulletin’ has become another reference for interpreting the plethora of surveys published these days. He predicts an even smaller margin in favor of Harris (48.8% vs. 48.2%), but above all he warns that the Republican candidate is in a moment of positive inertia because he knows that he will have a greater presence in the media with the issues. How to take advantage. To which Harris does not seem to have any answer. Just like it happened eight years ago, he remembers.

Due to the peculiarities of the electoral system, it matters little whether a state is won by a greater or lesser margin. This is why polls do not decide at what point in the vote each candidate starts gaining, but rather what their chances of being elected are after the delegates from each region are compiled. Then what is the meaning of survey? That Harris is going to win the election by a margin of 1.8 points? No, what really matters is that according to the latest data available, the Vice President’s chances of being elected are 48.2%, while Trump’s is 46.4%. In the end, the important thing is to see which lines are above each other to predict which of the two candidates is most likely to reach the White House.

Various media publish these aggregates of state polls to produce their own national polls. The most recognized are ‘The New York Times’ with Siena College, CBS with YouGov and Fox News.

NYT/Siena College voting history

In contrast to the case of the Siena College study for ‘The New York Times’ (49-48 in favor of Harris), the Fox News poll gives a slight advantage to Republicans (48-50). This is the first time since Biden’s appointment that he has put Trump ahead of his rival. Last week he predicted the exact opposite result, by two points in favor of the Democrats. In July and August, polls by conservative networks placed the former president ahead of his successor, when other analysts predicted a tie between the two.

Role of swing-states

The electoral system means that states where any candidate could prevail – either because polls predict narrow margins or traditionally swing between one party and the other – take on special importance. On occasion, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are referred to as ‘swing-states’.

This is why analyzes are based on results in these areas that have historically swung between one candidate and another. For now, according to the latest published studies, they will remain so. However, it should be borne in mind that in many cases the numbers are so similar that the difference between one candidate and another is less than the accuracy of the survey, which means that, technically, the projection will be “correct” even if the lag behind. The name came and it was imposed. In some cases, demographers do not dare to predict who will win.

The typical error of this type of survey is 3%, and in no case does the expected difference reach that figure. Georgia and Arizona are more inclined towards Trump, while Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan are towards Harris. In these five cases, with a distance of slightly more than 2%. The most disputed areas, at least for now, are Nevada and North Carolina. The Democrats will be in first place and the Republicans in second place, but in both cases by a margin of less than one point, which is well below the credibility index of projections.

Statistically, at least for now, these are uncertain polls in which, paradoxically, the polls cannot get it right with complete certainty, but neither can they fail, because what they predict is That either of the two candidates can win.