With less than a week until Election Day, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are in a tough race to win over undecided voters.

According to the polls, few presidential elections in the United States have been as competitive as this one.

Harris and Trump are in a dead heat and the outcome could be decided by turnout in the seven key swing states.

Who is ahead?

As of Tuesday, FiveThirtyEight’s daily election poll tracker shows Vice President Harris leading the national polls by 1.5 percentage points over former President Trump. However, that lead has narrowed slightly from last week’s 1.8-point lead, suggesting Trump is gradually closing the gap.

According to the latest Reuters/Ipsos polls, Harris’ lead over Trump has narrowed in the final stretch of the election.

According to the poll, Harris leads Republicans nationally by just one percentage point, 44 percent to 43 percent. The poll has a margin of error of about three percentage points in either direction.

When asked which candidate had a better view of the economy, unemployment and jobs, voters in the survey favored Trump 47 percent to 37 percent. Trump also continues to have a lead on economic and immigration issues.

The poll also showed Harris’ lead on the issue of political extremism shrinking. About 40 percent of voters said she had a better approach to addressing political extremism and threats to democracy, while 38 percent favored Trump.

The margins between both candidates are within the polls’ average margins of error, meaning one of them could potentially be in the lead. While most polls suggest Harris is ahead in the national vote, the two candidates are close in swing states.

It’s important to note that while national polls provide insight into voter sentiment, the Electoral College ultimately decides the winner, not the statewide popular vote. Many states tend to heavily favor either Republicans or Democrats.

What do the polls say about the swing states?

The seven key swing states are Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), North Carolina (16), Georgia (16), Michigan (15), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10) and Nevada (6), which together hold 93 electoral votes. Voices.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s average of recent polls, Harris and Trump are within the margin of error in each of these states. In Michigan, Harris maintains a slight lead over Trump, with a lead of +0.8 points since last week. She also gained narrow leads in Nevada and Wisconsin, showing how easily those states can swing either way.

Conversely, Trump has a slight lead in Pennsylvania and a clearer lead in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.

If the narrow margins reflected in the poll averages persist into election night, last week’s trend will continue and Trump will likely win. However, even a small shift away from him in these critical states – or an underestimation of Harris’ support – could lead to a victory for the vice president.

Notably, Georgia, where Trump currently leads, switched from Republican to Democrat in the 2020 presidential election after voting Republican for nearly 30 years. Arizona, where Trump also has a lead, was also won by Democrats by just 0.3 percentage points.

How trustworthy are surveys?

Election polls predict how the population might vote by surveying a sample of voters. Surveys are most often conducted over the phone or online. In some cases this will be done by mail or in person.

Survey trackers that aggregate a number of surveys are weighted based on a number of factors, such as: B. the sample size of the survey, the quality of the pollster, the timeliness of conducting the survey and the particular methods used.

Surveys are never 100 percent accurate. In both the 2016 and 2020 US elections, opinion polls underestimated the popularity of Republican candidates.

In the 2022 midterm elections, pollsters made another mistake. At the time, they underestimated Democratic support and predicted a Republican victory, which turned out to be wrong.

Experts point out that while polling services are sophisticated, their shelf life is limited.

“The problem is that, as the cliché goes, they are snapshots of time, so by the time you see them they are already out of date. The big question (this year) is with undecided voters,” Steven Erlanger, the New York Times’ European diplomatic correspondent, told Al Jazeera Inside story program.

Many of the polls conducted before this year’s presidential election have shown that the difference in support between Harris and Trump is within the margin of error.