The US presidential election is a month away. Tension is growing, polls give no answers

Next month, November 5, Americans will elect a president. The campaign, which has been going on for almost a year, is entering its final stretch. Despite many twists and surprises, according to polls the chances of both candidates are almost the same.

This is confirmed by almost all statistical models of the main centers dealing with election forecasts: the model of the popular FiveThirtyEight portal gives a 55 percent chance of victory for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. The model of the weekly “The Economist” estimates the chances of both candidates at “about 1/2”. According to Nate Silver, a well-known analyst, Harris's chances are 56 percent, and Trump's – 44 percent.

The rates on the bookmaker's markets are similar: according to the RealClearPolitics website, Harris also has a slight advantage there (an average of 49.7-48.9 percent).

According to national polling averages, Vice President Harris has a lead over Trump of 2-3 percentage points. But because of the way the president was elected USA – the winner in each (with two minor exceptions) of the states receives the entire pool of electoral votes in the 538-vote Electoral College – in practice, the victory will depend on how the votes are distributed in seven states where the result does not seem to be predetermined. In each of these states, the differences between the candidates are minimal and within the margin of statistical error.

According to a state polling average calculated by the New York Times, Kamala Harris he beats Trump in four of them (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada) by a difference of no more than 2 percentage points, and in the remaining three (Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina) Trump leads by the same difference. This deal would give Harris the win, but if she lost in Pennsylvania – where she leads by less than 1 percentage point – Trump would win. “This is the tightest election I've ever seen. Perhaps it's never been like this before,” said Nate Cohn, a leading New York Times analyst.

As in previous years, how accurate the forecasts turn out to be largely depends on how faithfully public opinion polls reflect the situation. In 2016, the clear favorite according to the polls was Hillary Clinton, but the research underestimated the Republican electorate and he ultimately won Donald Trump. Four years later, the poll lead Joe Biden was even greater, but the error of the largest pollsters at the state level was even greater and ultimately the election result was decided by less than 80,000 votes in three states.

In the 2022 congressional and state elections – as well as in the midterm elections and referenda that followed the Supreme Court's decision to strike down nationwide abortion rights – Democratic candidates were underrated almost every time. Clues as to the winner of the upcoming elections can also be found outside the polls. Allan Lichtman, a political scientist known for his forecasts, who uses his own system based on 13 factors (including the economic situation, the results of previous elections, successes/failures in foreign policy), predicts that Harris will win.

Although Election Day is still a month away, voting – by mail or in person – has already begun in several states, and in most of the rest of the country it will begin in the first weeks of October. Preliminary publicly available data show that fewer voters will use this option this year than in the pandemic year of 2020. According to data collected by the New York Times, so far 48 million Americans have applied for a mail-in ballot, or almost 1 /4 voters (in 2020, over 40 percent exercised this right). As in previous elections, in every state that releases this data, the majority of voters voting before Election Day are Democrats. In what is likely to be the most crucial state of the election, Pennsylvania, 25 percent of registered Democratic voters have so far made such a request, while only 12 percent of Republican voters have made such a request, even though the Republican Party this year spent $10 million on a campaign encouraging people to vote before Election Day. However, these are early statistics, and in most states, citizens will be able to vote by mail until almost Election Day on November 5.