The one between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is the tightest race for the White House in the last 60 years. This is highlighted by an analysis by CNN journalist Harry Enten, according to which polls released after the September 10 debate show that, while the vice president seems to have consolidated a slight lead nationally over her Republican rival, establishing a possible winner is impossible because their distance is well below the margin of error. And this is especially true if we look at the Electoral College.
Enten starts his analysis with the latest polls from yesterday by CBS News and NBC News, the best for Harris to date, considered ahead by 4 and 5 points respectively. But in both 2016 and 2020, the best polls for the Democratic candidates gave them at least double the lead that Harris would have. The journalist therefore considers the two polls in a broader context, also including recent ones by ABC News/Ipsos, Fox News and The New York Times/Siena College. On average, according to the latest CNN Poll of Polls, Harris is ahead by 3 points.
This corresponds to a trend seen throughout the election campaign: neither candidate has been able to gain a lead of 5 points or more in national polls. This includes the period when President Joe Biden was nominated as the Democratic candidate.
According to Enten, the fact that neither side has ever had a lead of at least 5 points is noteworthy because it is incredibly rare. Even in races for the White House that end up being very close, a candidate at some point almost always builds a significant lead. This time it didn't happen. And even Harris' performance in the debate with Trump, considered better than her challenger, does not seem to have moved the needle.
The reporter points out that you have to go back to the 1960 campaign (Kennedy-Nixon) to find a situation in which the consensus of both was always estimated within a distance of 5 percentage points in an average of national polls. Since then, in every presidential election campaign, there has been a period of at least three weeks in which one candidate has been ahead by 5 points or more.
A 3-point lead in national polls is anything but safe for Harris. Since 1948, the average difference between election eve polls and Election Day results has been 3 points, but in some years, like 2020, the error rate was even higher.
