The phenomenon is well known, he notes in a slightly ironic way Piotr SmolarUS correspondent of the French “Monde”: “Every time an election approaches in America, it ‘rains’ polls”. However, polls are the only, though certainly not perfect, means of recording the tendencies of the electorate. Even more so when it comes to contests like today’s presidential election, which is developing into a thriller as according to all indications the presidency of the USA, which is claimed by the vice president <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/donald-trump-whats-behind-the-us-presidents-baltimore-attack/" title="Donald Trump: What's behind the US President's Baltimore attack”>Kamala Harristhe Democratic nominee, and the Republican former president Donald Trumpwill be judged in the thread.
Tie
Nationally, Harris leads Trump by just one percentage point (49%-48%). All eyes, however, are on the ambivalent key states of Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona. According to a New York Times/Sienna College poll, Harris and Trump are tied at 48% in Nevada. In Wisconsin, pollsters see the candidates as a tie, although Harris has 49% to Trump’s 48%. In North Carolina, both are at 48%, but Trump is narrowly ahead. And in Michigan, their percentages are equal (48%), but Harris reportedly has a lead. In Pennsylvania Trump leads by one point (49%-48%), in Georgia by two points (49%-47%) and in Arizona by two points (47%-49%).
In US history, four presidents (Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016) have been elected to the White House despite losing the popular vote.
According to the American electoral system, to be elected the president needs the vote of at least 270 electors out of a total of 538 in the Electoral College. The number of electors of each State depends on its population. Populous California, for example, elects 54 electors while Montana has 3. According to the NYT, Harris is expected to secure 226 electoral votes and Trump 219. But the electoral votes in the swing states are the ones that will judge the result.
Harris and Trump are battling for the electoral votes of Michigan (15 electors), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10), North Carolina (16), Pennsylvania (19), Nevada (6), Georgia (16 electors) and the one elector of Nebraska’s 2nd District. However, according to the opinion polls, the battle in the seven conflicting states is “open”.
If the scenario in which Harris has secured 226 electoral votes holds true, then she will need 44 more to be elected president. While Trump, based on the scenario of “certain” 219 electors, will need the votes of 51 more.
However, polls can change until election day and no one can accurately predict their deviations. However, if Trump wins all the open states in which he leads, then he will have secured the coveted 270 electoral votes.
It is recalled that according to the American electoral system, the candidate of the party that wins in each State with 50%+1 of the votes also gets all the electors of that State. The only states where the distribution of electors is done proportionally (with enhanced proportionality), i.e. according to the percentage each party receives, are Nebraska and Maine.
The Electoral College system has often been criticized because it can cause a mismatch between the popular vote, that is, the vote of American voters nationwide, and the Electoral College vote that determines who is ultimately elected president.
In US history, four presidents (Rev Rutherford Hayes in 1876, the Benjamin Harrison in 1888, the George Bush the younger in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016) were elected to the White House despite losing the popular vote. In the event that the candidates of the two parties gather an equal number of electors, 269 each, the House of Representatives is the one that will choose the president and the Senate the vice president. In the past this happened once, in the elections of 1824, when the Andrew Jackson eventually lost the presidency (in the House of Representatives) to John Quincy Adams. In this year’s presidential elections, some analysts do not rule out the scenario of a tie even though they do not consider it the most likely.
The pollsters
As the battle for the presidential election is marginal, the Nate Conna “NYT” journalist who has been monitoring and analyzing, throughout the last year, the trends of the electorate, emphasizes that in order to avoid the mistakes of 2020, the methodology of this year’s polls has changed. The changes concern the way polls are conducted: instead of telephone surveys, polling companies are now using SMS to a random sample of voters as well as postal letters with questions.
The method works because voters open the letters and answer the questions much more than in telephone polls. Also, pollsters now use the “recalled vote” method, that is, they measure whether the number of voters who had declared that they voted for Biden or Trump in 2020 corresponds to the corresponding percentages that the candidates received in those the elections.
The polls in the critical states
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