the final forecasts from polling experts signal an extraordinarily close race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Nate Silver, founder of the analytics website FiveThirtyEight, released his last forecast after simulating the race 80,000 times using current polling data. His analysis found Harris with a 50.015% chance of winning, compared to Trump’s 49.985%—essentially a tie, highlighting just how close the race has become after Harris’s minor comeback from a 44%-55% deficit earlier this month.

Similarly, FiveThirtyEight’s own forecast gave Harris the slightest edge, estimating her probability of winning at around 50% versus Trump’s 49%. These forecasts aim to estimate the probability of either candidate winning, rather than exact vote shares, but many polls tracking voter preferences show similarly tight results.

The latest HarrisX/Forbes poll among likely voters, conducted between Wednesday and Friday, shows Harris leading Trump by a narrow 49%-48%, with a margin of error of one percentage point. In an Ipsos poll, also released Monday, Harris leads by a similarly narrow margin of 50%-48%. Some polls, however, give her a slightly larger edge, with a PBS News/NPR/Marist survey and a Cooperative Election Study both showing her ahead by four points, at 51%-47%.

Recent polls paint a mixed picture of the race’s final stretch. Harris holds a slim lead in several surveys, including a Morning Consult poll (49%-47%), an ABC/Ipsos poll (49%-46%), an Economist/YouGov survey (49%-47%), and a CBS/YouGov poll (50%-49%). Yet, NBC News and Emerson College polls released Sunday show the two candidates tied at 49%, and a Yahoo News/YouGov survey has them deadlocked at 47%—a result echoed by other recent tied polls from The New York Times/Siena College, Emerson College, and CNN/SSRS.

The latest Times/Siena poll, which indicated a dip in Harris’s support since early October, prompted concern for Democrats who have generally won the popular vote in recent presidential elections, even when losing the Electoral College. Trump, meanwhile, holds slight leads in recent polls of registered voters by CNBC (48%-46%) and the Wall Street Journal (47%-45%).

Since announcing her candidacy on July 21, Harris has made up ground on Trump, erasing his previous lead over President Biden. However, her advantage has diminished over the last two months, peaking at 3.7 points in August according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling average.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)