Ranking the battlegrounds: Where Harris and Trump stand

Vice President Harris and former President Trump are locked in an incredibly close race going into the final full week of the campaign — at least if the opinion polls are right.

Harris holds a narrowing lead in national polls. Her edge is down to less than one point in the polling average maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). 

In recent elections, Democratic candidates have needed a bigger national lead than this to prevail in the Electoral College. 

President Biden won the popular vote by more than four points nationally and eked out a narrow victory in 2020. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than two points and lost the election.

The polls are tighter still in the seven battleground states. The Hill/DDHQ state averages show Michigan in an exact tie and Trump leading in the other six swing states as of Friday evening. 

However, nowhere was Trump’s edge greater than two points. In three of the six states, it was under one point.

Given the extreme closeness of the election, each side can take heart — or get panicked — by individual polls.

A New York Times/Siena College national poll released Friday morning showed a tied race. This was bad news for Harris, not least because she had led by three points in a poll from the same organizations at the start of this month.

On the other hand, an ABC News/Ipsos poll, also released Friday, indicated that fully 49 percent of registered voters consider Trump to be a fascist.

Here’s where things stand right now in the battlegrounds.

Trump’s strongest bets — Arizona and North Carolina

There is a sliver of separation now between these two states and the other battlegrounds — in Trump’s favor.

In The Hill/DDHQ averages, the former president has a larger lead here than anywhere else. 

Other polling analyses, from FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin, also have Trump up in North Carolina and leading Arizona by a bigger margin than any other battleground.

Arizonans cast an unusually high share of their votes early — close to 80 percent in 2020.

The latest figures from the University of Florida Election Lab — which specializes in tracking early voting across the nation — show registered Republicans casting ballots at a slightly higher rate than four years ago in the state.

The statistics indicate that 42.1 percent of ballots cast so far in Arizona have come from registered Republicans and 35.4 percent from Democrats. Early ballots from registered voters of each party were roughly equal back in 2020.

To be sure, it’s worth noting that GOP figures could be up simply because Trump has encouraged his supporters nationwide to vote early this year, a method he cast aspersions on four years ago. 

It’s also true that Arizonans not affiliated with either major party — who have cast more than one-in-five ballots so far — likely hold the key to the outcome.

North Carolina, meanwhile, is the only one of this year’s seven battlegrounds that Trump won in 2020. Democrats have carried the state at the presidential level only twice in the past half-century, in 1976 and 2008.

Trump leads there by 1.5 percentage points in The Hill/DDHQ average.

Democrats have complained in recent weeks about GOP-friendly pollsters skewing the averages. 

But in the past week, two respected polls — from Emerson College and Marist College — have both placed Trump up in the Tar Heel State, albeit by just two points.

The Volatile Unpredictables — Georgia and Michigan

The near-impossibility of predicting this year’s election becomes especially acute in these two states.

There are specific reasons to suggest they might buck their usual electoral traditions.

Four years ago, Biden became the first Democrat since President Clinton in 1992 to carry Georgia — and he did so by a tiny margin.

Trump leads by 1.3 points in the current The Hill/DDHQ average. Trump backers have long thought that their easiest path to victory was to hold North Carolina, revert Georgia to what they consider its GOP-leaning default and win the biggest battleground, Pennsylvania.

But the Black share of the population in Georgia is significantly higher than any other battleground state, at about 33 percent. If those voters come out for Harris — bidding to become the first female Black president — they could see her through.

Harris and former President Obama appeared together at a huge Atlanta rally on Thursday evening, aimed in part at boosting Black turnout.

Despite Trump’s polling average lead, the most recent reputable poll in the Peach State, from Marist College, showed Harris with her nose in front by one point among registered voters.

Michigan offers an inverse picture. Only one Republican presidential nominee — Trump in 2016 — has carried the state since the 1980s. Harris had a lead of a almost two points at her peak.

But that lead has been erased — and not only because of the national trend.

There are also specific concerns about how the White House’s policies on Israel, Gaza and the broader Middle East are affecting Harris’s fortunes in a state with the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in the nation.

Separately, some labor unions have also not delivered the endorsements Harris’s supporters had been hoping to see.

Harris’s hopes: Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin

These three states alone would not be enough to get Harris over the finish line. But, if she carried them, she would only need one more win from the remaining four states.

Nevada hasn’t been won by the GOP in a presidential election since 2004. Harris had been up by two points as recently as mid-September. 

That polling edge has slipped away and Democratic alarm has been exacerbated by early voting figures showing more ballots having been cast by registered Republicans. But Harris will be hoping that the state can hold for her, in part through labor support from the influential Culinary Workers Union.

Wisconsin is anyone’s guess. 

The state has a long labor tradition and is part of the “Blue Wall” states, with Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Democrats have won for many years, with the sole exception of 2016.

On the other hand, Wisconsin polls both in 2016 and 2020 underestimated Trump’s support to a significant degree. 

Trump leads — by a tiny four-tenths of a point — in The Hill/DDHQ average. However, two other polling averages, from FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin, have Harris up by similarly small fractions.

Pennsylvania is the biggest prize among the battlegrounds, with 19 Electoral College Votes.

Trump leads all three polling averages — The Hill/DDHQ, FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin — but by less than one-third of a point.

Harris will hope for big turnout in the key cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — and that her strongest issue, abortion, will help her in the key counties in the Philadelphia suburbs.

If Trump wins the state, the picture looks very bleak for the vice president.