Trump gains momentum in tight race as polls shift
Two weeks before the presidential elections in the United States, none of the candidates had a clear advantage. However, polls that recently gave Kamala Harris a better chance and some early voting data now indicate trends favourable to former President Donald Trump.
After more than a year of the election campaign in the USA, there are two weeks left until the day that will decide who will govern the world's largest economy. However, predicting the winner of these elections is still comparable to predicting the outcome of a coin toss.
According to the poll average compiled by "The New York Times," Vice President Kamala Harris still has a slight advantage—amounting to 1 percentage point—over Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the poll averages in all seven "swing" states, which will practically decide the election outcome, fall within the margin of error and range from 2 percentage points in favour of Trump in Arizona to less than 1 percentage point in the other six. In the three largest of these states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina—the difference is within 0.2 percentage points.
Despite the tie in the poll results, in recent weeks they showed a clear, though slight, shift toward Donald Trump in most of these states, as well as in national surveys. Just two weeks earlier, Harris's poll advantage averaged 3 percentage points, and according to the "NYT" average, she was leading in four of the seven states; today it’s Trump who has a slight advantage in four.
Following these changes, the forecasts of statistical models from most centres, which a month before the elections gave Harris slightly better chances of winning, today give Trump slightly better odds. The Decision Desk HQ centre's model changed its race assessment on Sunday, for the first time since Harris's candidacy was announced, giving Trump a 52% chance of winning. "The Economist" magazine's model estimates Trump's chances at 54%, the popular FiveThirtyEight website's model – 52%, while the model of well-known analyst Nate Silver – 53%.
Gamblers betting on outcomes on online markets, such as Polymarket, founded by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, also have more faith in the Republican candidate's victory, where current odds suggest a 62% chance for Trump. However, as reported by the "Wall Street Journal" last week, this result includes a bet by a mysterious unknown investor who wagered $30 million CAD on Trump.
As in previous years, how accurate the forecasts will be largely depends on how faithfully the public opinion polls reflect the situation. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was a clear favourite according to polls, but the polls underestimated the Republican electorate.
Four years later, Joe Biden's polling advantage was even greater, but the most significant pollster errors at the state level were also larger, and ultimately, the election outcome was decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. In the 2022 Congressional and state elections—as well as in special elections and referendums that took place after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the nationwide right to abortion—Democratic candidates were almost always underestimated.
Democrats also believe that the trend in shifting polls towards Trump in recent weeks is due to a "flood" of low-quality polls by firms associated with Republicans.
