Vice President Kamala Harris has a narrower lead in the polls than President Joe Biden or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had at the same point in the 2020 and 2016 elections.

Early voting is underway in many states, including several battleground states that are expected to decide the outcome of the race between Harris and former President Donald Trump. The polls were particularly close this year, with neither candidate having a clear lead with little more than two weeks to go before Election Day.

This is in contrast to the last two presidential election cycles, when Biden and Clinton had more comfortable leads over Trump in the polls. Both Democratic candidates’ margins ultimately exceeded the margin by which they won the popular vote, with Clinton losing the presidency.

FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics reported Harris with a modest lead over Trump on Monday.

At FiveThirtyEight, Harris rose 1.7 points. On average in recent polls, 48.1 percent of voters said they planned to vote for her and 46.4 percent said they would vote for Trump. RealClearPolitics had Harris up 1, receiving an average of support from 49.2 percent of voters, compared to 48.2 percent for Trump.

As of October 21, 2020, Biden led Trump by 9.9 points on the FiveThirtyEight average and 6.2 percent on the RealClearPolitics average. At the same point in 2016, both FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics reported a 6.2-point lead for Clinton.

Biden won the 2020 popular vote by 4.5 points, with narrower margins in key battleground states. Meanwhile, Clinton had a 2.1-point lead in the popular vote, narrowly losing the most votes.

Newsweek emailed the Harris and Trump campaigns seeking comment.

If a similar polling error occurs in 2024 as in 2016 or 2020, it could mean worrisome news for Harris. However, polling experts have warned that polling errors cannot be repeated from year to year as pollsters have adjusted their methods since 2020 in the hope of being more accurate.

Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, said previously Newsweek that pollsters have begun using more text messages and panels than just phone calls, incorporating education into their weighting and using past voting histories to correct possible undercounts of Trump’s support.

For example, in the 2012 election, polls were more positive for Republicans than the final results. RealClearPolitics showed on October 21 that then-President Barack Obama had a lead of just 0.2 points, with the final average showing Obama at a lead of 0.7 points. In the end, he won the popular vote by around 3.9 votes and a convincing victory in the Electoral College.

Harris has generally had a lead in the popular vote, but it is unclear how a modest national lead may impact swing states needed to win 270 votes in the Electoral College.

A Suffolk University/USA today A poll of 1,000 likely voters conducted Oct. 14-18 showed Harris ahead of Trump by one point (45 percent to 44 percent). Third-party and independent candidates received about three percent support overall.

The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points.

Meanwhile a Washington Post A poll in the seven key battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – showed Harris ahead by one point in those states, with leaders in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. While Nevada was tied, Trump was ahead in Arizona and North Carolina.

From September 30 to October 15, 5,016 likely voters in these states were surveyed and the margin of error was plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.

In the final stretch of the campaign, Harris and Trump will spend the next few weeks traversing these key states, hoping to win over the last undecided voters and convince their supporters to turn out at the polls. Swing states like North Carolina saw high voter turnout in the first few days of early voting.