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Forecast one week before election day 47 million votes They have already played a role in the presidential race between Kamala Harris And Donald Trump. It’s possible the polls are wrong, but they’re unlikely to change much before this long and winding campaign cycle is over. Poll analysts, who use different methods to average polls, approach the race a little differently. But without splitting hairs, it’s hard to see this as anything other than an incredibly close race in which late turnout trends and polling errors tell us something we can’t know right now: the identity of the 47th president.

Kamala Harris in national poll averages ahead by 1.5 percent FiveThirtyEight per; 1.2 percent According to Nate Silver; 2 percent According to Washington to mail (rounding numbers) and one percent According to New York Times (this also rounds the numbers). RealClearPolitics, which, unlike other media outlets, does not weigh the accuracy of polls or adjust for partisan bias, shows that: Trump leads nationally with an eyelash (0.1 percent).

While national polls can help us understand trends and underlying dynamics because they often have larger samples, the fact that they have been so close for weeks, if not months, suggests that they cannot tell us who will actually win. The best we can do is make a prediction based on the relationship between the national popular vote and the number of electoral votes in previous elections. Seeing Harris leading Trump by less than 2 percentage points in national polls makes Democrats nervous because Hillary Clinton In 2016, the national popular vote was won and lost by 2.1 percent. Joe Biden He barely won in 2020, despite winning the popular vote by 4.5 percent. However we have no idea Whether Trump will have the Electoral College advantage again, and if so, how big it might be. (Harris may actually do better in the Electoral College than in the popular vote, because Barack Obama did this in 2012.) And while we don’t know how voting errors will decrease, it seems overall quality of surveys higher this year than in the last presidential election.

So it’s a better idea to focus on polls in the seven battleground states. But they are also generally very close. If you get down to fractions, you can identify the leaders of all seven. FiveThirtyEight currently shows Trump leading in five of those seven states (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North CarolinaAnd Pennsylvania), but by less than a single point in Nevada and Pennsylvania. Harris leads Michigan And Wisconsinbut still less than one percent. A look at rounded battleground state numbers new York Times averages is revealing: It shows four battleground states (Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) as “tie”; Harris is ahead by less than one percentage point in Michigan, Trump is ahead by one percentage point in Georgia and Trump is ahead in Arizona. by 2 percent. A single swing of one percentage point could give Harris 308 electoral votes or Trump 312 electoral votes. washington to mailbattlefield status averages make the same point in a slightly different way. Harris is leading in four states (Michigan with 2 percent, Nevada with less than one percent, Pennsylvania with one percent, and Wisconsin with one percent) and Trump in three states (Arizona with two percent, Georgia with two percent, and North Carolina with two percent). They show you are ahead. one percent). But then to mail makes this important observation: “Each state is within a normal-sized voting error of 3.5 points, and it could go either way.”

Both national and state polls show that the dynamics of the Harris-Trump race are quite clear. Trump is very strong with the voters who care most about these issues. migration and continues to lead in most polls (though margins are narrowing) among election-focused voters economy. Harris, meanwhile, has a large lead among concerned voters. abortion rights. If you start with the Biden-Trump divide in the electorate from 2020, Harris improved Democrats’ performance among college-educated white voters, while Trump improved Republicans’ performance among Black and Latino voters. Unsurprisingly, this puts a small dent in Harris’s odds in states with relatively low non-white voting blocs (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, for example) and helps Trump in Sun Belt states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. But while the Harris campaign is working hard on this issue, there are also some contradictory undercurrents. Bring black men back to your columnAll of Trump get out vote strategy It is based on mobilizing low-propensity voters from core demographic groups (especially white voters without a college education). Important reaction of opinion leaders this week Insults about Puerto Ricans (A critical change demographics in extremely close and important Pennsylvania) was proposed by a comedian at Trump’s wild new york rally It shows that campaign tracking events can still influence the outcome.

That’s why it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the latest polls in the final days of the campaign and try not to get distracted by potentially misleading data points and claims. There are too many reviews early voting trendsFor example. But other than reflecting an overall decline in mail voting since the 2020 pandemic election and efforts by particularly partisan Republicans to vote early in person, it’s hard to know what those numbers mean if most early voters don’t. They will vote on Election Day, and Democrats tend to be relatively “late” early voters. Some of the older reliable indicators of presidential election results are of limited use. Yep, the president’s job approval rating is abysmal right now 39.5 percent (according to FiveThirtyEight), but Kamala Harris has done a pretty good job of presenting herself as a “change” candidate despite her own mandate. And yes, Harris has a small but consistent advantage over Trump when it comes to personal preference (here’s FiveThirtyEight’s odds: 46.3 percent positive versus 47.5 percent negativeTrump’s 43.5 percent positive, 52.1 percent negative), but so did Hillary Clinton in 2016.

If you had to pick a likely winner at this point, the official forecasters are all narrowly favoring Trump (Economist Trump has the strongest probability of winning at 56 percent; Nate Silver And Decision Desk Headquarters Trump is at 54 percent; five thirty eight shows it as 53 percent). Some analysts are looking at the race in terms of less-than-clear Electoral College scenarios; this is new york Times‘ characterization on the overall race: “No candidate currently has a poll lead in enough states to receive 270 delegate votes. Polls in swing states are essentially tied.” Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball expresses the contradictory “gut feeling” refers to trends in favor of Trump, while noting a sense of deja vu in favor of Harris from 2022 onwards.

In other words, it comes down to the wire.