Very few votes separate Trump and Harris in close contest five days before the election

Five days before the United States presidential election, polls show that the gap between Democrats and Republicans is very close. The contest is especially close in the key states of Nevada and Pennsylvania, where surveys show a tie.

The margin is so fair that the paradox of Kamala Harris winning the popular vote and losing the November 5 election could even occur if Donald Trump, who is closing the gap on the Democrats, wins the key states that give him a majority of the electorate. College and, therefore, the keys to the White House.

According to polls, Michigan and Wisconsin slightly favor Harris. These are key Rust Belt (in Spanish, rust belt) states that gave Trump the presidency in 2016, but they have leads of 1.07 and 0.71 points, respectively.

Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, by a greater margin, are leaning toward Trump. On the other hand, both the candidates in Nevada and Pennsylvania are still very much tied. Republicans are 0.36 points above Harris in Pennsylvania, the key state that distributes the most votes in the Electoral College (19 total), which is responsible for choosing the president.

The Electoral College is composed of 538 delegates. To win, a candidate will have to get at least 270 votes. Delegates are distributed by state and the winning party in each region takes the full number of delegates assigned to that state, except in Maine (4) and Nebraska (5), where the system is proportional. With these two exceptions, it doesn’t matter whether you win a state by one ballot or by a million: if you win, you take all the electoral votes in that state and the loser in that state gets nothing. Get it.

At the moment, the polls present a very tough scenario, with Kamala Harris having a slight advantage. In the following graph you can see how they are based on an average of surveys published by FiveThirtyEight, which aggregates different surveys and gives different weights to each polling house according to date, sample size, methodology, transparency or bias. Is.

Harris leads Trump by 1.3 points in total votes received nationally (known as the popular vote). Harris has still been trending for the presidency since joining the race, although the margin has been narrowing in recent weeks. A month ago there was a difference of up to three points between them.

The following map shows the victory forecast for each candidate according to the FiveThirtyEight model, which takes into account not only polls but also each state’s historical vote, economic and social data to simulate each candidate’s chances of victory. Takes into account.

According to that model, victory in the 2024 elections will be decided in seven major states. Right now the model gives undecided results in four of them and is very close in Trump’s favor in the other three.

Among the most contested states, the Democratic nominee will need wins in Nevada and Wisconsin, in addition to retaining Michigan, to reach the Electoral College majority of 270 electoral votes.

The following table shows a summary of how the race is in the elections in the seven states where the fight is tightest and will decide the 2024 elections in the United States.

Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are the three swing states. There is a possibility that Harris could win the White House without him, although that would be a very difficult scenario. Georgia and North Carolina are more important for Trump. For now, Pennsylvania is being seen as the place where the last word will be and Trump has managed to overturn the elections in this state, by a very narrow margin.