US poll live updates: Attendees react to early election results ahead of Democratic presidential nominee U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s election night rally during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, at Howard University, in Washington, U.S., November 5, 2024.
US Poll Live Updates: Early trends from the US presidential elections showed Donald Trump leading in Georgia, a key swing state with 16 electoral college votes. Kamala Harris led from two key swing states of Michigan, with 15 electoral votes and Pennsylvania, with 19 electoral votes. During the last leg of the election campaign, Trump and Kamala Harris spent all their energies to win support in a handful of US states, called the “purple” or “battleground” states. These are states where either Democratic or Republican candidate could plausibly win in a statewide election.…Read More
Swin states, with just over 60 million Americans, also have the potential to tilt the final result of the US presidential election, thanks to their sizeable number of electoral college votes. Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential elections is an example. Despite his rival, Democrat Hilary Clinton, securing nearly three million more popular votes, Trump managed to win 306 electoral college votes. Seven such states in this year’s election are – Pennsylvania (19), Nevada (6), North Carolina (16), Georgia (16), Arizona (11), Michigan (15) and Wisconsin (10).
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Poll predictions for these states ahead of the vote show Trump and Harris at a statistical tie, making the outcome unpredictable. At a national level, Harris leads Trump by a single digit in four new national polls released on Sunday and Monday, but three other surveys are dead heat.
Analysts predict many undecided voters will tilt the scale of the final outcome in these states. According to a Gallup poll, an average of 43% of US adults identified themselves as independents in 2023, tying a record high first reached in 2014. Of the nearly nine million registered voters in Pennsylvania, about 1.4 million identified themselves as independents.
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Another factor that could determine the results in these states is voter turnout among women and minority groups. A Politico analysis of early voting in several states found that women make up 55% of early voters and men 45%. The gender gap is particularly pronounced in several swing states, where women vote in higher numbers than men.
The two leading contenders spent a large sum on electoral campaigns in these states to sway undecided voters. According to a Reuters report, voters in these states have been bombarded with text messages, billboards, campaign visits, social media messages, and robocalls ahead of voting.