So far, about 75 million people have voted early.
With just two days to go before the Nov. 5 general election, multiple final polls show that the 2024 presidential race still appears to be close.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are crisscrossing the country to rally voters in the states that matter most. At the same time, each side is investing massive resources to drive up turnout for the final voting period.
What Final Polls Are Saying
Multiple final polls released by The New York Times-Siena College, Morning Consult, Rasmussen, ABC News, Atlas Intel, and NBC News show that Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck, although the picture becomes murkier when broken down by swing states.
Morning Consult’s final survey of the election shows that while Harris has a 2-point lead over Trump nationally, Trump is ahead of Harris in North Carolina and Georgia by 2 points, ahead by 1 point in Wisconsin, tied in Arizona, and tied in Pennsylvania. The only swing state where the former president is trailing is Michigan, where he is down 1 point, according to the pollster.
An NBC survey released this weekend shows that Harris has the support of 49 percent of registered voters in a head-to-head matchup, and Trump received an identical 49 percent. About 2 percent of voters said they were not sure.
Released this weekend, the final New York Times opinion poll shows Harris with marginal leads in Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin and Trump just ahead in Arizona. The two are in close races in Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, according to the poll, which surveyed 7,879 likely voters in the seven states from Oct. 24 to Nov. 2.
That poll shows Harris leading Trump by 3 points in Nevada, 2 points in North Carolina, 2 points in Wisconsin, and 1 point in Georgia. The two candidates are tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and the survey shows Trump ahead by 3 points in Arizona.
In an ABC News-Ipsos poll released over the weekend, Harris had 49 percent support, while Trump had 46 percent. The final poll from Rasmussen Reports, posted on Nov. 1, shows that Trump has a 3-point lead over Harris.
The final survey from Atlas Intel shows that Trump is ahead in all swing states by 1 point to 6.5 points, with the pollster saying he has “significant margins” over Harris in Nevada and Arizona.
A model produced by poll analyst Nate Silver, who used to operate the FiveThirtyEight website, has given Trump a 53.8 percent chance of winning over Harris’s 45.8 percent.
Silver, at the same time, has accused some pollsters of putting their “finger on the scale” and lying to keep the presidential race close in polls, according to a podcast interview last week.
Early Voting Breakdown
As of the morning of Nov. 3, about 75 million people had voted early across dozens of states.
More than 41.5 million had voted in person early, compared with 34.7 million who had returned mail-in ballots, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. About 67 million mail ballots had been requested.
The total of early in-person voting has significantly outpaced the total seen in the 2020 election, which featured more voting by mail because of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions. According to the tracker, 35 million people cast in-person early ballots, whereas more than 65 million returned mail ballots in 2020.
Of the two dozen states that report early voting by party affiliation, registered Democrats have a slim 1.7-point lead over registered Republicans. Some 14.6 million Democrats have cast early ballots, Republicans have cast 13.9 million, and unaffiliated voters have cast almost 10 million, according to the election tracker.
Swing State Breakdown
Although Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan don’t report by party affiliation, four other battleground states do.
In Arizona, registered Republicans are ahead of registered Democrats by about 180,000 votes, while unaffiliated voters make up about 26.7 percent of the total votes cast, the tracker shows. The state has only mail-in ballots, not early in-person voting.
In Nevada, Republicans have a 40,000-vote lead in the early vote total, buoyed by a strong in-person vote showing, the data show.
Days after early voting opened in North Carolina, registered Republicans took a slight lead over Democrats and had maintained the advantage as of early on Nov. 3, according to the tracker. GOP voters had a 42,000-vote lead over Democrats in that state.
Although only 1.7 million people have voted early in Pennsylvania, Democrats have a 400,000-ballot lead over Republicans, the tracker shows. Pennsylvania, which has about 9 million registered voters, reports only mail-in ballots.
Final Events
Trump began Nov. 2 with an appearance in North Carolina; he stopped next in Virginia and returned to the Tar Heel state in the evening. There is perhaps no more important swing state than Pennsylvania, where Trump is campaigning on Nov. 3. He also has appearances scheduled for North Carolina and Georgia.
Harris campaigned in Atlanta on Nov. 2 before a rally in North Carolina’s capital, signs that her team is sensing opportunity in the South. She’s planning multiple stops in Michigan on Nov. 3, shifting to a Democratic-leaning state in the “blue wall” where her allies believe that she is vulnerable.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.