2024 presidential election, Measure | Norwegian US election poll on Kamala Harris and Donald Trump surprises Hilmar Mjelde

In a poll conducted among Norwegians, 60.3 percent answered that they thought Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidential election on November 5.

25.2 percent believe that former president Donald Trump will win, shows the survey conducted by InFact for Nettavisen. 14.5 percent answered “I don’t know”.

The survey was conducted on October 3 with 1,051 respondents.

– This surprises me, because in that case it shows that Norway does not have an accurate picture of the situation in the election campaign, says professor of political science at the Norwegian University of Applied Sciences, Hilmar Mjelde , to Nettavisen.

Fairly

The average national opinion polls show that there is an extremely close race between Trump and Harris with a little less than a month before the election. The average polls for the decisive swing states also bear witness to electoral swings.

– This seems to be the fairest presidential election since 1960. Donald Trump is more likely to win this election than he did in 2016 and 2020 when we look at American polls, says Mjelde.

The professor refers to the historic presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The election was held on 8 November 1960, and is often referred to as one of the fairest presidential elections ever.

Kennedy won by a margin of only 118,550 more votes than Nixon nationwide. However, Kennedy received a clear majority of the electorate (303 to 219 electors).

– This study is even more strange because Trump has been the president of the United States for some time, says Mjelde about the InFact study.

As you know, Trump won over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

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There are several possible reasons

Mjelde says that the result in the InFact study for Nettavisen can be due to several reasons:

– Norway follows American politics as a form of entertainment. Norwegian media coverage of Trump is sensationalist and often not covered as a serious person, says the professor.

– It is also not so strange that we shake our heads at the fact that a man like Trump, with all the real things he has done, can be the president of the United States again. In Europe, responsible parties would not let a figure like Trump through, Mjelde says.

– Harris also fits much better with our image of what an American president should be, because she behaves like a normal politician. So maybe this measure shows a lot about who we want to win, he says.

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A brief guide

In the national polls, Harris is 2.6 percentage points ahead of Trump (48.5 to 45.9), the website’s average poll shows Five thirty eight.

But anyone who follows American politics knows that the real battle is over the swing states.

Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are the decisive swing states in the 2024 presidential election.

The average polls by FiveThirtyEight on Tuesday afternoon show a very close race in the decisive swing states:

• Arizona: Trump leads by 1.5 percentage points.
• Georgia: Trump leads by 1 percentage point.
• Michigan: Harris leads by 1.7 percentage points.
• Nevada: Harris leads by 1 percentage point.
• North Carolina: Trump leads by 0.9 percentage points.
• Pennsylvania: Harris leads by 0.7 percentage points.
• Wisconsin: Harris leads by 1.6 percentage points.