Exclusive By: KANWAL ABIDI.
Washington D.C. USA : In a race to the White House, Vice President Harris will return to Pennsylvania on Monday after focusing on younger voters in Michigan on Sunday, where she touted “momentum.” Former President Trump returns today to North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania after campaigning on Sunday in the Tar Heel State and Georgia. The usually-jaunty former president conceded Sunday to ABC News that he could lose the elections. “I think I have a pretty substantial lead,” Trump said. “But you could say, yeah, yeah, you could lose. Bad things could happen. You know, things happen, but it's going to be interesting.” More than 78 million people have voted early. Millions are expected to cast ballots by Tuesday. Quality polls in the last days of a suspenseful, wildly unpredictable election hint at some surprises ahead. Harris appears to have slim leads in Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, while Trump is ahead in Arizona. But in seven swing states, the results remain within the margin of sampling error, meaning neither candidate has a definitive lead. Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania are basically tied, which helps explain the states in which the candidates are barnstorming, through rewinds of their speeches and get-out- the-vote appeals on the final day. Many of Trump’s supporters – emboldened by the former President’s false claims of election fraud in 2020 and unverified assertions of interference in this contest – express confidence the former president will return to the White House come January. His supporters’ views that the country is on the wrong track, coupled with trust in Trump’s ability to handle the economy, have buoyed his candidacy since he was selected to be his party’s nominee. That was true for Trump in poll after poll, whether pitted against President Biden or Vice President Harris. But Harris’s backers are just as eager to bet the Vice President will win with persuasive messaging that took advantage of her opponent’s self-inflicted distractions in the homestretch and a ground operation that profited from record-setting campaign cash. “We are currently on pace to turn out the voters we need to get to 50%+1 – in each battleground state,” Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told supporters. Republicans are primed to back Trump if he contests election results and that includes in Congress. “The Senate is 100 percent aligned with the rest of the party, even more so when it comes to ensuring a fair vote in the swing states,” said John Ullyot, a GOP strategist and former Senate aide and former Trump administration official. One factor to watch nationwide, is emerging “gender gap.” The latest national NBC News poll shows Trump winning men by 18 percentage points and Harris carrying women by 16 points – a combined 34-point gender gap, up from 30 points in October’s NBC News poll.
The trusted Des Moines Register / Mediacom Iowa Poll released Saturday found Harris with a late-breaking lead against Trump in a state he handily won twice. Female voters appear to be an advantage for the Vice President there. Who is the change candidate in the race? This might be the most important question in a contest between a sitting vice president (Harris) and an ex-president (Trump), who are both competing for voters who think the
nation is on the wrong track. In the final NBC News poll, 46% of voters said Harris better represents change, compared with 41% who believe Trump does — a slight advantage for Harris. But when they were asked what concerns them more — Harris’ continuing the same approach as Biden or Trump’s continuing the approach from his first term as president — 41% say they are more concerned about Harris’ following in Biden’s path, compared with 40% who are more worried about Trump’s repeating the actions of his term, according to the same poll. CBS News’s battleground tracker put Harris ahead in the Electoral College tally as of Sunday (Harris’s 226 to Trump’s potential 219). Whereas, the election forecast model by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill on Sunday gave Trump a 54 percent chance of winning the presidency. The polls can’t tell us who is going to win the Presidential election or which party will control the congress. The race is that close and uncertain and polls in previous election cycles have been that far off the mark. With those caveats out of the way, let’s not ignore the consistent storylines in the polls that have defined the political forces shaping the election. They don’t tell us who’s going to win – but soon we'll know the winner of the race to the White House. What the polls can do already is help explain the forces that shaped this election and how either Trump or Harris could emerge victorious!
