US election poll tracker 2024: Who is ahead?

Voters in the US will go to the polls on November 5th to elect their next president.

The election was originally a rematch of 2020, but was upended in July when President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

The big question now is: Will America get its first female president or a second term for Donald Trump?

As Election Day approaches, we’ll keep an eye on the polls and see what impact the election has on the race for the White House.

Since entering the race in late July, Harris has been slightly ahead of Trump in the national polling averages, and he remains ahead – as shown in the table below, with the latest numbers rounded to the nearest whole number.

Harris saw her poll numbers rise in the first weeks of her campaign, building a lead of nearly four percentage points toward the end of August.

The numbers remained relatively stable through September, even after the only debate between the two candidates on September 10, which was watched by nearly 70 million people.

In recent days, the gap between them has narrowed, as you can see in the poll tracker table below, with the trend lines showing the averages and the dots showing individual poll results for each candidate.

While these national polls are a useful indication of how popular a candidate is across the country, they are not necessarily an accurate way to predict the outcome of the election.

This is because the United States has an electoral college system in which each state receives a number of votes roughly equal to the size of its population. There are a total of 538 electoral votes up for grabs, so a candidate must get 270 to win.

There are 50 states in the United States, but since most of them almost always vote for the same party, there are actually only a handful where both candidates have a chance of winning. These are the places where the election is won or lost. They are referred to as “battleground states” or “swing states”.

Currently, polls are very close in the seven states considered battlegrounds in this election, and polling averages show neither candidate has a decisive lead in any of them.

Looking at trends since Harris joined the race helps highlight some differences between states – but it’s important to note that there are fewer state polls than national polls, so we have less data to rely on we can fall back on, and every survey has a margin of error, meaning the numbers can be higher or lower.

In Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since early August, but Trump has held a small lead for several weeks. It’s a similar story in Nevada, but Harris is the candidate who is slightly ahead.

In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris has been ahead by two or three points since the beginning of August, but in the last few days the polls have tightened significantly and Trump now has a very small lead in Pennsylvania.

All three of these states were Democratic strongholds before Trump eclipsed them on his way to winning the presidency in 2016. Biden recaptured it in 2020, and if Harris does the same, she will be well on her way to winning the election.

In a sign of how the race has changed since Harris became the Democratic nominee, he trailed Trump by an average of nearly five percentage points in the seven swing states on the day Biden left the race.

In Pennsylvania, Biden was trailing by nearly 4.5 percentage points when he left office, as the chart below shows. It is a key state for both campaigns because it has the most electoral votes of the seven states, making it easier to reach the required 270 votes if you win it.

The numbers we used in the graphs above are averages created by Survey Analysis Website 538Part of the American news channel ABC News. To create them, 538 collects data from individual surveys conducted both at the national level and in contested states by numerous polling institutes.

As part of its quality control, 538 only includes surveys from companies that meet certain criteria, e.g. B. Transparency about how many people they surveyed, when the survey was conducted, and how the survey was conducted (phone calls, SMS, online, etc.). ).

You can read more about the 538 methodology Here.

Currently, the polls suggest that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are within a few percentage points of each other in all swing states – and when the race is so close, it’s very hard to predict the winners.

Polls underestimated support for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Polling companies will try to solve this problem in a variety of ways, including how to shape their results to reflect the makeup of the voting population.

It’s difficult to get these adjustments right, and pollsters still need to make educated guesses about other factors, such as who will actually show up to vote on November 5th.

Written and produced by Mike Hills and Libby Rogers. Designed by Joy Roxas.