EXPLAINER

We track the latest polls with less than two weeks to go before US voters choose a new president on November 5.

With just 11 days remaining until election day in the United States, polling averages indicate that the two leading presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, are effectively tied in most key swing states.

To win, a candidate needs to secure 270 of the 538 electoral votes up for grabs. Electoral College votes are distributed across states according to their relative populations.

Who is in the lead?

According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily election poll tracker, as of Thursday, Vice President Harris is leading in the national polls and has a 1.8-percentage-point lead over former President Trump.

But, a new poll from the Financial Times (FT)  on Thursday showed that Trump has slightly surpassed Harris as the candidate Americans trust most with the economy.

This is the second poll this week that indicates that Harris’s momentum may have stalled. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Trump is leading Harris by 2 percentage points nationally, with 47 percent compared to her 45 percent.

Both margins are within the polls’ margins of error, suggesting that either candidate could be in the lead. Most polls to date have shown Harris ahead in the national vote, with the two candidates neck-and-neck in swing states.

While national surveys provide valuable insights into voter sentiment, the Electoral College will determine the ultimate winner,  not the nationwide popular vote. Most states lean heavily, or very clearly, towards Republicans or Democrats.

What are the polls saying about the swing states?

The seven swing states are Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), North Carolina (16), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10) and Nevada (6). Together, they account for 93 Electoral College votes.

But FiveThirtyEight’s average of recent surveys places Harris and Trump within the margin of error of polls in each of these seven states.

Harris’s support in Michigan has grown marginally, from less than half a percentage point to 0.7 percent. The vice president is marginally ahead in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Trump has a slight edge over Harris in Pennsylvania and holds a slightly larger lead in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. In Nevada, Trump and Harris are in a dead heat.

If the razor-thin margins captured by the poll averages hold on election night, Trump is favoured to win. But even the tiniest swing away from him in these key states — or an underestimation of Harris’s support in the polls — could lead to a win for the vice president.

In the 2020 presidential election, Georgia — where Trump is currently leading — flipped from Republican red to Democratic blue after nearly three decades of voting Republican, and in Arizona — where Trump is also ahead — the Democrats won by a narrow margin of 0.3 percentage points.

How trustworthy are polls?

Election polls predict how the population might vote by surveying a sample of voters. Surveys are most commonly conducted by phone or online. In some cases, it is via post or in person.

Poll trackers, which aggregate a number of polls together, are weighted based on a number of factors, such as the sample size of the poll, the pollster quality, how recently the poll was conducted and the particular methodologies employed.

According to a Pew Research Center study, confidence in public opinion polling has been undermined by inaccuracies in 2016 and 2020. In both general elections, many polls failed to accurately capture the support for Republican candidates, including Trump.

Pollsters got it wrong again in the 2022 midterm elections. Only this time, they undercounted the support for Democrats and predicted a win for Republicans, only to be proven wrong.