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The polls are still tight, while betting markets massively favour Trump
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How has the picture changed recently? And what could change things in the final week?
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Check out our 2024 US Presidential Election Live Blog here
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An incredibly tight race
All the polling is indicating an incredibly tight race between the two Presidential candidates.
On the 25th of October, the newest CNN/SSRS poll showed Harris and Trump tied - both totting up 47% of likely voters.
On the 27th of October, CBS News/YouGov had Harris at 50% and Trump at 49%, while slightly more decisively an ABC News/Ipsos poll showed Harris at 51% and Trump at 47%.
All these national polls are pointing towards a tighter race than anybody imagined. While Harris has been pulling out all the stops with blockbuster celebrity-packed rallies, this has not yet led to a material change in the polling.
Both campaigns are increasingly confident
The Harris and Trump campaigns have both signaled in recent days that they are feeling increasingly confident that the result of the election could go their way.
According to a New York Times article on Monday, the Kamala Harris campaign believes their extensive ground campaign, as well as a strong position in "Blue Wall" states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, can push the campaign over into winning territory next week.
Yet the Trump campaign, too, asserted last night that Trump would win by a landslide, invoking their alleged leads in early voting and in swing state polling. One member of the campaign suggested that "we've never had data that looks this good".
Experts say that the campaign is relying on skewed polling to back up such claims.
If you are growing increasingly sceptical of such pronouncements, then you're not alone.
Battleground, a weekly political newsletter, suggests that this is an uniquely unpredictable election and that polls are not meeting the moment - its recent article is titled "Skeptical of Recent Polls? You Should Be..."
It highlights that pollsters are desperate not to underestimate Trump support as they did so egregiously in 2016. It also makes the point that it has taken 8 years to counteract this deficiency, which suggests they will be ill-prepared for a candidate such as Harris who was only officially in the running around 100 days before Election Day.
So, yes - both campaigns are telling the media they are confident.
And yes, there is more polling than ever before.
But is it more trustworthy one way or another? It won't become clear for a week...
Some polling miscellany...
Outside of poring over national polling, and minutely tracking the variances in swing state polls, the recent surfeit of polls also means we get some more fun and whimsical data to take a look at.
The kids will be alright
One of the most prominent of these was announced yesterday, with the result of Nickelodeon's "Kids Pick the President" poll, which surveyed 32,000 children on their choice if they could vote.
Harris came out on top, with 52% of the vote, compared to Trump with 48%.
It may seem like child's play, but the Nickelodeon poll has been run in every Presidential election since 1988, and has only wrongly predicted the result twice - in 2004 and in 2016. That makes them right seven in nine times.
From young voters to the electoral system...
Anyone following the US Election will be aware that while a candidate for President might win the most votes, they will not necessarily win the Presidency. That's because of the Electoral College system, which we covered in a recent Betfair Explainer.
According to recent polling, this idiosyncrasy is not a popular one among the American public.
A Pew Research Center survey recently suggested that 63% of Americans would favour a direct popular vote instead of the Electoral College system.
There are significant demographic splits in the polling - 80% of Democrats would like to abolish the Electoral College, but only 47% of Republicans. Women are far more in favour of abolishing the current system than men.
The Electoral College is criticised for giving smaller states disproportionate sway, as well as leading to outcomes where a candidate has more votes than their opponent but still loses the Presidency.
Ted Cruz in trouble?
Ted Cruz, the US Senator for Texas since 2013 and a long-time bogeyman of the left, seems imperiled according to a string of recent polls.
On Monday, a poll conducted by Cruz's Democratic opponent suggested that the two candidates were tied at 46%. The New York Times / Siena College poll - an incredibly well-respected one - had Cruz at 50% to the Democrats' 46%, though another poll from Emerson College had Cruz only 1% ahead.
Ted Cruz was one of the most credible contenders against Donald Trump in the race for the Republican nomination in 2016. Him losing his seat would be one of the biggest possible upsets of this campaign.
How do the polls and odds compare?
While the polling is showing an incredibly tight race, the punters on the Betfair Exchange are heavily backing Trump to sweep to the White House next week.
Donald Trump has been the favourite to win the US Election on the Betfair Exchange for weeks. Yet in the last five days, his advantage has solidified even further.
He is the runaway favourite with the punters to win the election, at 8/151.53 odds which give him a 64% chance of winning. Only five days ago, he was at 5/71.71 odds, translating to around a 58% chance.
Harris is down at 9/52.80, only a 36% chance.
Trump's odds are his shortest at this point in the run up to the three elections he has contested. In 2020 he sat at 2/13.00 odds, with a 34% chance of winning, and in 2016 one week out he had gained on Clinton but was only at 11/43.75 - a 26% chance - at that point.
While swing states are incredibly close in the polls - with FiveThirtyEight's polling average showing the two candidates even in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - in the betting markets Trump is ahead in all states except Michigan.