Vice President Harris and former President Trump have one month to convince voters to side with them in what appears likely to be one of the tightest presidential races in American history.
Harris enters the homestretch as the slight favorite, with The Hill/Decision Desk HQ model giving her a 54 percent chance of winning the presidency. Republicans are bigger favorites to win the Senate, at 71 percent. The House battle is as close as the race for the White House, with Republicans having a 56 percent chance, according to the model, of holding on to their majority.
With no more debates scheduled between the adversaries, it’s not entirely clear what could further shift the numbers, which have remained roughly the same for weeks.
“If you look at the way this presidential campaign has been thus far, the only thing that’s predictable is how unpredictable it’s been,” Republican strategist Nicole Schlinger said.
The past four months alone have included one of the most consequential presidential debates ever, two assassination attempts on one of the candidates and an incumbent president ending a reelection bid later in the cycle than any point in modern history.
Harris taking over for President Biden as the Democratic candidate spurred new energy for the party after Biden’s chances of reelection seemed to be plummeting. She enjoyed a remarkable rise in favorability after being underwater for a couple years.
But after her improvements began to level off, the polls have remained largely static. Harris has maintained a slight lead in the national average and a smaller lead in most of the seven key battleground states.
But almost all polls from major polling institutions of those states have shown a candidate ahead by a couple points at most, within the margin of error. Some have predicted this election could end up one of the closest in U.S. history.
“I think the race is where I expected it would be, which is really, really close,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said. “It’s going to come down to the last month and who can execute and get done what they need to get done in a couple swing states.”
While some voters have already cast their ballots with early voting in a few states getting underway, much can still happen in the next four weeks to shake up the race, especially given how long a week can be in the current news cycle.
Just in the past 10 days, a major hurricane struck the Southeastern United States and a significant escalation has broken out in the Middle East after Israel killed the head of the militant group Hezbollah and Iran responded with firing missiles at Israel. In such a hyper-polarized atmosphere, each event has become politicized.
And October has been known to throw in a last-minute surprise right before Election Day. The two most recent presidential election cycles, in 2016 and 2020, saw the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about groping women; the reopening of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server; and the reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
A surprise in 2024 could include a growing conflagration in the Middle East, another natural disaster causing havoc or the unexpected release of audio or video of a candidate speaking. With two assassination attempts already having happened, more political violence seems not outside the realm of possibility.
Still, strategists questioned how much another surprise would redefine the race given the intense partisanship and how much the country has already experienced this cycle.
Schlinger noted that an October surprise initially had meant one side having opposition research about the other side and releasing it at the last minute to get the most attention, pointing to revelations of George W. Bush’s drunk driving arrest in the 2000 election from decades earlier.
But she said for the most part “folks are likely to know what they need to know” to make a decision, hence the small movement of the polls.
“It’s not a matter of when it gets this close,” she said. “I think it’s a matter of what the American people have seen and lived through over the last 12 months in terms of surprises.”
But others noted that it doesn’t mean even a marginal change could be critical in such a tight race.
“We’re fighting for inches on the map, so every little thing is magnified when you’re talking about these states,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, referring to the main swing states.
O’Connell said if a state like Arizona or Wisconsin is being decided by just 10,000 votes, that may require a difference of five votes per precinct. Trump carried the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by tens of thousands of votes in 2016, and Biden won them in 2020 by only a bit more.
“I don’t think you’re going to have this monstrous thing that’s going to shove it one way or the other, but I do think you could have a series of events that together finally says to somebody who doesn’t traditionally vote, screw it, I’m pulling the lever for Trump or Harris,” O’Connell said.
For now, both sides are projecting optimism about their prospects.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said in a call with reporters marking a month to Election Day that the enthusiasm behind Harris is “palpable.” But he said Democrats know that the election will “come down to the margins.”
He said the party has been on the ground well before this year to get its message out to voters.
“We’re not taking any vote for granted as we fight against Donald Trump, JD Vance and their dangerous Project 2025 agenda,” Harrison said.
O’Connell noted Trump’s past elections outperforming expectations, which should have him feeling “pretty good” given that the polling is tighter now than it was in 2016 or 2020. He pointed to under-the-surface developments that should also give Trump reason for hope.
He said if the recovery from Hurricane Helene is underwhelming as the death toll continues to rise, that could be critical in battleground states that the storm hit like Georgia and North Carolina. He said the poll from the Arab American Institute showing Trump leading among Arab American voters is notable especially because Democrats have traditionally had a 2-to-1 advantage among that group.
“So when you take those two things, I mean if this port [strike] had gone on beyond the week, that would have politically been the best thing Donald Trump could hope for,” O’Connell said, referencing the strike port workers were on before reaching a deal and returning to work Friday.
Democrats and Republicans agreed that the result could ultimately come to turnout and motivation.
“It’s either a turnout game or a persuasion game at this point, and I think this election is both, and you have to do both,” Leopold said. “You have to both turn people out and persuade people.”
Schlinger emphasized that campaigns do not want to leave votes on the table that they didn’t get because of a lack of infrastructure.
“This is where a grassroots ground game makes all the difference,” she said. “Where you’re knocking on doors, you’re making phone calls, you’re identifying people, and you’re making sure that the right people you identify turn out and you don’t mistakenly turn out your opponent.”