What the surveys say (I): Maximum national equality
Just over a week before the in-person appointment with the polls, and with millions of Americans having already exercised their right to vote, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in a situation of technical tie. Although the FiveThirtyEight survey aggregator places the Democrat 1.4 points ahead of her Republican rival, some polls published in recent days, such as the one by TIPP Insights on Saturday, point to total equality, with 48% of the vote for each candidate.
This is not good news for Harris: although possible, there is little chance that, by losing in the popular vote at the federal level, she can prevail in electoral votes. The trend in recent elections is exactly the opposite: Democrats tend to get better results in the popular vote than in the electoral college, which is what ultimately tips the balance in favor of one candidate or another.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton got almost three million more votes than Donald Trump—largely thanks to her comfortable victories in California, New York and Illinois—but He ended up clearly succumbing to the Republican in the electoral college: 232 against 306with narrow defeats in states that usually favored Democrats, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin. The reason for this gap is in the electoral system, which grants the winner in each State all the electoral votes—except in Maine and Nebraska—regardless of the advantage obtained.
