The final polls of the presidential race have good and bad news for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who are locked in a virtual tie as voters cast their ballots on Election Day.
A New York Times/Siena College survey found Harris gaining in North Carolina and Georgia, while Trump has momentum in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Meanwhile, a shock poll from veteran pollster Ann Selzer in Iowa found Trump behind by 3 percentage points in a state he won comfortably in 2020.
The polls paint a familiar picture of the state of the race. The Iowa survey, which the Trump campaign quickly disputed, found a late shift among women away from the former president, raising fresh questions about whether the gender gap will sink his candidacy. Harris continues to be dogged by anemic support among traditional Democratic voting blocs, including black men.
A RealClearPolitics polling average of the seven battleground states shows Trump has a slight edge at 48.5%, compared to Harris at 47.7%. However, other averages show the reverse. The New York Times finds Harris has a narrow edge at 49%, compared to Trump at 48%.
Each suggests a nail-biter race that will be decided at the margins.
More than 78 million ballots have already been cast before Tuesday, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
The first polls close at 7 p.m. ET as the nation learns who will become the president-elect on Tuesday or in the days thereafter.
Harris will spend election night in Washington, D.C., at her alma mater, Howard University. Trump, for his part, will watch the results roll in from West Palm Beach, Florida — not at his Mar-a-Lago estate but at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.
With the conclusion of the election cycle this week, the Washington Examiner reranked the battleground states for the final time, according to which will be the hardest for Harris to win.
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1. Arizona
Arizona marks the hardest battleground for Harris to win due to Trump’s consistent lead over the vice president in the state for several weeks now.
A RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump leading by more than 2 points, 48.9% to 46.3%. FiveThirtyEight’s average also shows Trump leading in Arizona by more than 2 points, 49.1% to 46.5%.
Other sources that show a lead for Trump include the polling averages for the Washington Post and the New York Times, with the latter putting Trump’s lead at 3 points.
Both Trump and Harris visited Arizona on Halloween to deliver their closing messages to voters. “He does not believe women should have the agency and authority to make decisions about their own bodies,” Harris said in her remarks, attacking Trump over abortion access.
Trump made immigration his focus out West while grabbing headlines for suggesting former Rep. Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic, would reevaluate her hawkish foreign policy views if she had guns “trained on her face.”
2. Georgia
Georgia is another Sun Belt state where Trump consistently leads Harris in polls by roughly 2 points, according to the Washington Post average.
RealClearPolitics’s polling average in the Peach State also shows Trump at 49.3% to Harris’s 47.4%, while the New York Times’s average shows him at a 1-point lead, 49% to 48%.
Recent CNN polls conducted by SSRS showed Trump at 48% and Harris at 47% among likely voters, but these and other surveys are within the margin of error.
More than 4 million Georgians have cast an early vote in the lead-up to Election Day, with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger calling the early voting period the most successful in state history “because voters trust the process.”
3. North Carolina
In North Carolina, Trump’s lead over Harris is narrower, with the RealClearPolitics polling average showing him ahead by 1.5 points, 48.8% to 47.3%. Likewise, FiveThirtyEight’s model shows him leading by 1.2 points, 48.4% to Harris’s 47.2%.
The New York Times polling average shows the candidates tied at 48%, while the Washington Post’s averages show Trump with a less-than-1-point lead over Harris. However, CNN’s poll shows Harris leading by roughly 1 point in the state, 48% to 47%, among likely voters.
Trump spent the weekend into Monday barnstorming the state, which he needs to win along with Georgia and Pennsylvania to defeat Harris. There are some warning signs that Harris is gaining in the Tar Heel State after the New York Times/Siena College poll showed Harris leading by 3 points.
4. Nevada
In past iterations of the scorecard, Harris has eked out a slight edge over Trump in Nevada. But recent developments show the state could be shifting in Trump’s favor.
The New York Times’s polling average shows Trump leading by 1 point, 49% to 48%, over Harris. Both RealClearPolitics‘s and FiveThirtyEight‘s averages in the Silver State show Trump narrowly leading Harris by no more than 1 point.
The Washington Post’s model shows Harris leading Trump by less than 1 point.
In the face of shifting polls, Harris has turned to star power to help shore up support in the state. On Thursday, pop superstar Jennifer Lopez and Mexican pop rock band Mana stumped for Harris in Las Vegas. She also campaigned in Reno, Nevada, before the Vegas stop.
Academy-Award-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence touched down in Vegas on Friday to door-knock for the Harris campaign.
5. Pennsylvania
In the most important battleground of them all, Harris and Trump remain neck-and-neck. A Marist College poll of likely voters in the Keystone State shows Harris leading Trump 50% to 48%, which follows a September poll in which the two were tied at 49%.
The Washington Post polling average shows Harris with a tiny advantage of less than 1 point, but RealClearPolitics’s average also shows Trump with just a 0.3-point lead, 48.3% to 48%.
Harris closed out the campaign cycle with a Monday night concert outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art after campaigning in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Pittsburgh.
Days earlier, Trump supporters turned out in droves to cast early ballots in one of the state’s bellwether counties in a shift from four years ago, when Trump discouraged early voting with his unsubstantiated claims of fraud. He spent Sunday in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and went to in Reading, Pennsylvania, and Pittsburgh on Monday.
6. Michigan
Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, make up the blue wall states that Harris needs to win for the easiest path to the White House.
Harris is now leading Trump in Michigan, according to several polling averages. She has a narrow lead, 48.6% to Trump’s 47.7%, RealClearPolitics’s model shows.
FiveThirtyEight‘s average has Harris leading by less than 1 point, while the Washington Post model shows Harris with a 2-point lead. Yet Marist’s poll shows Harris leading Trump by 3 points in the state, 51% to 48%, among Michigan likely voters, a decrease from the September poll when she led by 5 points. The New York Times’s polling average shows the two candidates tied at 48%.
Trump met with Arab American leaders in Dearborn, Michigan, on Friday as Harris struggles to deal with the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war before he campaigned in Warren, Michigan, that same day. He then closed out the election Monday evening in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Meanwhile, Harris campaigned in East Lansing, Michigan, home to Michigan State University, on Sunday as she sought to galvanize college supporters.
7. Wisconsin
Like Michigan, Harris has polled consistently over Trump in Wisconsin over the past several weeks.
A Marist poll showed Harris leading Trump by 2 points, 50% to 48%, among likely voters in the state, and by 5 points among independents, 51% to 45%.
The RealClearPolitics average shows Harris with a narrow lead, 48.5% to 48.2%, while the New York Times/Siena College poll shows Harris with a 3-point lead. For the Washington Post model, Harris is ahead by 2 points in the state.
Harris and Trump held dueling rallies in the state on Friday in the Milwaukee area, with rapper Cardi B joining Harris in her final stop in the state.
