Four weeks before Election Day, 2024 polls continue to show a presidential race that remains on a knife’s edge and within the margin of error.
That’s true for recent national polls like the NPR/PBS/Marist one, which has Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly leading former President Donald Trump — 2 points among likely voters, 50%-48%, the poll’s margin of error (plus or minus 3.7 percentage points).
This is also true in the battleground state polls that will ultimately decide the presidential race.
In Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, Harris and Trump are essentially tied, perhaps with a slight tilt to Trump. While Harris has slightly larger leads in the Great Lakes states of Michigan and Wisconsin, those leads are within the bounds of potential polling error. And the most important recent survey in Pennsylvania – a part 270 the most direct ways to vote for both Harris and Trump—seems like a jump ball.
What can surveys tell us?
Given the poll’s margin of error, historically low response rates when it reaches voters, and yes, past ballot misses, it’s fool’s errand to expect accuracy from political polls.
What we can But the inference from public polling is whether a race is close. And no matter how you view this race, polls in all the different states and nationally, including those with different assumptions of 2024 voters and use different weighing methods.
Surveys are also useful in determining the trend of the competition. And this a a fundamentally different race than existed before President Joe Biden withdrew from the re-election campaign and endorsed Harris.
Polls are useful for gauging a politician’s popularity: Most polls currently favor Harris higher favorable ratings More so than Trump after a sharp increase in numbers since he ran for president this summer.
This was not the case When Biden is in the race.
What polls can’t tell us
But polls can’t tell us whether a candidate is going to win the presidency if he’s ahead or behind by 1-2 points in several polls, whether nationally or in key battleground states.
The 2024 race will ultimately be determined by voter turnout, breaking news events, how third-party/undecided votes are cut, and other factors. Ultimately, what matters is which candidate wins in key battleground states that can make a difference of 10,000 or 20,000 votes—margins too small to expect unequivocal clarity from pre-election polls.