It’s Almost Over
Nobody’s leading: Both Democratic contender Kamala Harris and Republican contender Donald Trump are tied in most of the national polls, with one day to go until the presidential election. “In the history of modern polling, there’s never been a race where the final polls showed such a close contest,” reports The New York Times‘ Nate Cohn. “While the race was fundamentally close all of October, it is pretty clear that the polls shifted toward Mr. Trump over the last few weeks. The national polls have become extremely close, raising the possibility of a Trump victory in the popular vote. And Ms. Harris’s once clear-but-modest lead in the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan has all but evaporated.”
Trump pulled ahead a tiny bit in Pennsylvania, but the state looks like a real toss-up, with a handful of polls showing both candidates tied there, and several showing each candidate ahead. Iowa, a solidly Republican state that went for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, has been upgraded to a Harris win—plus three—by the famous pollster Ann Selzer, who tends to be regarded highly by others in the industry.
“Pollsters are [possibly] herding very heavily in high-profile Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania but then showing their true colors in the more obscure Midwestern states,” argues pollster Nate Silver in Silver Bulletin. “Our model isn’t quite sophisticated enough to go into this level of detail, but the most important update you should probably make from the Selzer poll is that Harris might overperform her polls in the Blue Wall—especially in Wisconsin, the most correlated with Iowa of the three.”
Silver also observed that Harris consistently underperforms in states that were hit by high inflation, even states where you would otherwise expect her to be popular. This may be a sign that voters blame the Biden administration for high prices and that they associate Harris with a continuation of Biden’s policies.
What will happen in Nevada? Early voting results in Nevada show Republicans are doing quite well, and Donald Trump has maintained a better-than-expected performance there. It’s unclear whether these factors bode well for Sam Brown, an Army veteran who lost the 2022 Republican primary for the state’s Senate seat but is now running again. He’s up against Democrat Jacky Rosen, who served in the House from 2017 to 2019 and has been serving as senator since 2019, making abortion a key focus of her bid for reelection.
“Nevada and neighboring Arizona have long been viewed as the weaker pickup opportunities on the Senate map and Republicans are not seriously contesting any of the House districts in the Silver State,” reports Politico. “If Republicans oust Rosen, they are likely looking at a big Senate majority. They need to flip only two seats to guarantee control of the chamber; West Virginia, Montana an
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