Chocolate bars with the faces of Democratic presidential nominee US Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump are displayed at a store in John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, US.
Credit: Reuters Photo
The presidential race appears to be hurtling toward a photo finish, with the final set of polls by The New York Times and Siena College finding Vice President Kamala Harris showing new strength in North Carolina and Georgia as former President Donald Trump erases her lead in Pennsylvania and maintains his advantage in Arizona.
It has been decades since the polls have shown the nation facing a presidential race that is so close across so many states in both the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt. The tightly contested landscape means the race remains highly uncertain as the campaign enters its final hours.
Harris is now narrowly ahead in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, the polls show, while Trump leads in Arizona. The polls show them locked in close races in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. But the results in all seven states are within the margin of sampling error, meaning neither candidate has a definitive lead in any of them.
Both candidates have multiple pathways available to capture the 270 Electoral College votes required to claim victory, assuming that polls are not dramatically underestimating the support for one or the other. In such a close race, even a small systemic polling error could tip the contest decisively in either direction.
But there are signs that late deciders are breaking for Harris: Among the 8 percent of voters who said they had only recently decided on their vote, she wins the group by 55 percent to 44 percent. (With Election Day nearing, 11 percent of voters remained undecided or persuadable, down from 16 percent about a month ago.)
The polling comes as more than 70 million Americans have already voted, according to the University of Florida Election Lab.
Roughly 40 per cent of those surveyed by the Times/Siena poll across the seven states said they had voted. Harris wins those voters by a margin of 8 percentage points, the polls found. Trump has an edge among voters who say they are highly likely to vote but have not yet cast a ballot.
Trump has been gaining ground in Pennsylvania, where Harris had a 4-percentage-point edge in all previous Times/Siena polls in the state since she entered the race. The race is now tied, indicating an increasingly competitive contest in the state, which strategists in both campaigns believe could tip the election.
William Renfro, an electrical utility student from Las Vegas working as a part-time barista, said he considered himself a libertarian. "Fiscally, I'm more conservative," he said. "Socially, I'm more liberal."
He said that he had decided to support Harris because he was troubled by the way Trump had pushed falsehoods about Haitian migrants in Ohio eating dogs and cats, made inflammatory statements, and appeared with Laura Loomer, a far-right activist. "But when you have, you know, with that Laura Loomer thing, and then stuff about the Haitian migrants in Ohio," he said, "It's very 'Why do I want this person to lead the country that I live in?'"
Rates of early voting are particularly high in North Carolina, where more than half the voters said they had cast a ballot. Harris wins early voters in the state by 8 percentage points, perhaps contributing to her 3-percentage-point edge in the survey of the state. Despite recent devastation there from Hurricane Helene, more than 9 out of 10 North Carolina voters said that the storm and its aftermath have had no impact on their ability to vote.
The only state where the poll found Trump winning with people who said they had voted was Arizona. Forty-six percent of voters there said they had voted, and Trump wins that group, 50 per cent to 46 per cent.
The polls also reveal a shift in the issues being prioritized by voters in the final stretch of the race. The economy still remains their top concern, but in states like Wisconsin, where Harris has held a consistent edge, abortion now nearly matches the economy as voters' most important issue. And in Arizona, where Trump leads, immigration also continues to rise as a crucial issue driving voters' choices.
Dakota Parrish, 31, who works at an insurance company, said he was supporting Trump because he believes the country was more economically prosperous when he was president.
"It's not so much about, like, Donald Trump as a person in this case," said Parrish, who lives in Surprise, Arizona. "People could afford more, could live a happier life under the policies that were put in place."
The survey shows that Trump has continued to hold on to the core of the coalition that supported him in his past two presidential bids -- white voters who did not attend college, and men -- while expanding his support among younger, nonwhite and newer voters. He is exceeding his 2020 vote share in Arizona and Michigan, both states he did not win four years ago.
Harris is underperforming relative to President Joe Biden's performance in 2020 with younger voters, Black voters, particularly Black women, and Latino voters. But she has improved on his numbers with these groups since he dropped out of the race in July.
The gender gap remains wide across all seven states, with Harris the favorite of women and Trump preferred by men. For women and younger voters, abortion now surpasses the economy as the most important issue driving votes.
The Battle for the Senate
Along with the presidential campaign, the race for control of the Senate has also tightened. In all three Northern "blue wall" states, the Democratic advantage is notably diminished in the final days of the campaign.
In Pennsylvania, Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, leads by 5 percentage points, down from 9 in September. In Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat, leads by 4 percentage points, down from 8 in September.
And in the contest for Michigan's open seat, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, and her Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, are neck and neck.
Democratic candidates have a stronger hold on Sun Belt contests, with Rep. Ruben Gallego leading Kari Lake in Arizona by 5 percentage points and Sen. Jacky Rosen with a 9-point lead over her Republican challenger, Sam Brown, in Nevada.
All the Democratic candidates for Senate are outperforming Harris, an indication that a potentially crucial slice of voters may split their tickets by supporting both Trump and the Democratic candidate for Senate in their state.
Georgia Micola von Fürstenrecht, a Republican from Phoenix, said she had voted for both Trump and Gallego because she dislikes Lake, the Republican nominee.
"The woman is unhinged. Ruben Gallego served our country as a United States Marine and I come from a military family," Micola von Fürstenrecht, 60, said. "He may not do everything right either, but I would trust him with my life before her. She doesn't give a damn."
Democrats currently hold a 51-seat Senate majority, but Republicans are set to pick up a seat in West Virginia after the retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
For the Democrats to retain control of the Senate, they must defend their seats in all five races, while also staving off Republican challengers in Ohio and in Montana, where Sen. Jon Tester, the incumbent Democrat, is trailing, according to Times polling averages of the race. Recent polling shows Democrats may have an opportunity to defeat Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, though their candidate, Rep. Colin Allred, remains a long shot in the race.
In North Carolina, Josh Stein, the Democratic candidate for governor, holds a substantial 17-percentage-point lead over his opponent, Mark Robinson, the Republican lieutenant governor with a history of offensive remarks.
Abortion on the Ballot
In Arizona and Nevada, a majority of both men and women also back amendments to codify abortion rights into their state constitutions.
Such a measure has notably more support in Nevada, where 64 per cent of voters say they back an amendment to their state constitution. In Arizona, 55 per cent of voters support a similar amendment.
Voters have sided with abortion rights in all seven states where the question has appeared on the ballot since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the decision that had established a constitutional right to an abortion.
While voters have backed abortion rights in more conservative states, including Kansas and Kentucky, support for the measures has never exceeded 60 per cent in any of those states.
Linda Guggia, 46, a real estate agent in Henderson, Nevada, said she backed the abortion rights amendment in her state. But she also voted for Trump, who she believes will be stronger on economic issues.
"As of right now, that's not a main focal point in my family. I have a son, you know?" she said, referring to abortion rights. "So it's not important, but I understand, you know, the rights of other women and I do respect that."
How These Polls Were Conducted
Here are the key things to know about these polls from The New York Times and Siena College:
Interviewers spoke with 7,879 likely voters across the seven battleground states, including 1,025 voters in Arizona, 1,004 voters in Georgia, 998 voters in Michigan, 1,010 voters in Nevada, 1,010 voters in North Carolina, 1,527 voters in Pennsylvania and 1,305 voters in Wisconsin from Oct. 24 to Nov. 2.
Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, more than 98 per cent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for these polls.
Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For these polls, interviewers placed about 850,000 calls to more than 320,000 voters.
To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree.
The margin of sampling error among likely voters is plus or minus 1.3 percentage points across the seven battleground states and about plus or minus 3.5 percentage points in each state poll. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When the difference between two values is computed -- such as a candidate's lead in a race -- the margin of error is twice as large.
The Times/Siena polls of Pennsylvania in 2024 were conducted in partnership with the Philadelphia Inquirer and were funded in part by a grant from the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The poll was designed and conducted independently from the institute.