US elections: Polls indicate tightly contested race between Harris, Trump

Two recent major polls have revealed a tightly contested race in the upcoming American presidential elections between Vice President Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party and her Republican rival Donald Trump.

As of Wednesday, nearly 60 million people had already voted either by mail-in-vote or in-person early votes, five days ahead of the general elections scheduled for November 5. Simultaneous voting and campaigning are a unique aspect of American democracy.

A Fox Poll released on Wednesday revealed that Trump is ahead of Harris in two battleground States, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, by just one percentage point, while there is a tie between the two in Michigan. The three other battleground States this time are Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin.

 

A CNN poll put the two nominees tied at 48 per cent in Pennsylvania, while Harris is ahead of Trump by six points in Wisconsin and by five points in Michigan. CBS News polls said Trump and Harris are tied at 49 per cent in Pennsylvania. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the 2024 presidential election.

Real Clear Politics, which tracks all major polls, gives a slender 0.4 percentage points advantage to Trump at the national level, while in the battleground States, he has a lead of just one per cent. Trump is, however, leading in the betting market with 63.1 points against Harris's 35.8.

Meanwhile, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday wrote that a Harris victory would mean a fourth Obama term.

Her candidacy is best understood as an attempt to continue the progressive political wave that began in 2006 with the GOP defeat in Congress and rolled ashore as a tsunami amid the financial panic of 2008. She is running for what essentially would be Barack Obama's fourth progressive term, the daily wrote.

At home, she's no centrist. Abroad, she seems unprepared for the dangers ahead, the journal said.

The Washington Post said on Wednesday that Harris has held her leads nationally and in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, but her lead in Pennsylvania shrunk in the last week. Trump still leads in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, it said.

According to CNN, Harris runs much closer to Trump on trust to handle the economy and further ahead of him on handling democracy in both Michigan and Wisconsin, where she also holds wider advantages on key attributes than in Pennsylvania, differences that help to explain her stronger showing in the upper Midwest states.