'Trump has motivated voters on both sides of the political spectrum...Harris becomes the equalizer,' says political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus
With the 2024 US presidential election 28 days away, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are running neck-and-neck in the polls, and both candidates appear to be heading to a photo finish, with no clear frontrunner in the American public's eye.
The latest numbers compiled by the polling tracker 538 show both Trump, the Republican nominee, and Harris, the Democratic nominee, in a virtual dead heat.
A snapshot of six key swing or battleground states exemplifies that, considering that the margins of error basically even out any discrepancies in who has the lead in each poll.
In North Carolina, Trump leads Harris by a razor-thin margin of 48% to 47.5%, just a half-percentage difference, based on an average of the compilation of the major polls taken across the United States.
Likewise, Harris is hanging on by a thread in Pennsylvania, leading Trump by less than one percent at 48% to 47.2%.
The vice president also leads Trump in Nevada (47.9% - 46.8%) and Wisconsin (48.5% - 46.7%), whereas the former president is ahead of Harris in Arizona (48.1% - 46.9%) and Georgia (48.3% - 47.2%).
"There are lots of polls out there. It's hard to know precisely which one's the right poll, but they're all telling people basically the same thing: that there's a kind of narrowing in the gap (between both candidates)," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
"Every day, there's a new poll that demonstrates that one party or one candidate or the other is up," he continued. "These changes are so fluid because you've got issues that are changing and you've got this nonstop media cycle that is affecting...how people plan to vote."
Rottinghaus told Anadolu that the tides in the polls changed after President Joe Biden dropped his bid for re-election and Harris jumped into the role of the Democratic nominee. Before that happened, Trump was leading Biden in most nationwide polls, but with the changing of the guard in the Democratic Party, the 2024 election has turned into a fight that is likely to last all the way to the finish line.
"Donald Trump has motivated voters on both sides of the political spectrum, and that has amplified the stakes in terms of the future of the country," said Rottinghaus. "But Harris becomes the equalizer, so to speak, in this fight."
The professor emphasized that this is an important election which is likely going to go down to the wire based on both candidates' stances on the issues, in particular abortion, immigration and the state of the US economy.
Rottinghaus broke down these major issues to Anadolu so international audiences can better understand why they are paramount to each party and why they matter to American voters.
Abortion: "Democrats tend to be pro-choice because they feel that women can and should be in charge of their own bodies, and that had been the law since the 1970s," said Rottinghaus, until the Trump administration appointed a Republican-majority Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. He said if Harris and the Democrats win the election, they would work on restoring the Roe ruling to make abortion legal nationwide again.
"Republicans are more conservative and often more religious, so their perspective is that abortion is a moral wrong and needs to be ended, period," he said. "Not a lot of room in between there, although this country had functioned fairly well with a kind of moderate stance (on abortion)."
Immigration: "Republicans feel that the border is too porous, that there are simply too many people crossing altogether, but especially people who are not legally entitled to be here," said Rottinghaus. Republicans have also used murder and violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border as a focal point of why their stance on stricter border policies will make the country safer.
Democrats have debunked that Republican narrative, pointing out that former President Trump successfully killed the Biden administration's bipartisan border deal in the Senate which would have secured the southern border and curbed the immigration policies that currently exist.
Rottinghaus said Democrats have pivoted away from their opposition's negative stance and are painting the picture of immigration in a more positive light: "Democrats feel that the need to have more like a kind of robust workforce and policies that are moral, especially when it comes to asylum seekers, is paramount."
US Economy: "Republicans look at the Biden administration and say that everything that is kind of hurting the middle class has been fumbled by the Biden administration. Prices are up and job losses are up," said Rottinghaus.
Democrats have countered that argument, trying to downplay near-record inflation over the past several years by attributing it to the COVID-19 pandemic and have put a more positive spin on the US economy.
"These problems with the economy...are not what (Democrats) need to face," said Rottinghaus. "The Democrats are saying that, you know, the economy is improving, and the inflation is on paper, much lower, and the stock market's doing very well, so people who are invested are likely to be happier than people who aren't."
Another topic of importance to Americans is gun control and the right to bear arms under the US Constitution's Second Amendment.
"Republicans want to see a more robust protection of the Second Amendment, which allows for citizens to keep and bear arms...their perspective is that that right should be uninfringed," said Rottinghaus.
"Democrats are looking to find a more kind of a softer read of the Second Amendment, where they are more worried about the increase of gun violence and the way that that is creating, you know, serious problems in the country, and they are looking for ways to limit how and when people can purchase firearms because of mass shootings at schools and malls," he continued.
Rottinghaus also told Anadolu that both candidates' stances on US involvement in the Middle East is very important during this election, as Israel, which is one of America's allies, is currently involved in two volatile military conflicts -- the war in Gaza and the current situation with Iran, in which the Iran fired missiles towards Israel earlier this month.
"Republicans feel that...(the US) should be in lock-step with Israel on defense matters, and Democrats certainly are sympathetic to that, because that's been the policy of the country for decades. But (Democrats) are also concerned about the level of violence being perpetrated against the Palestinian people," he said.
Regarding Iran, Rottinghaus said that both candidates have similar stances, as they do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Republicans want to take a hardline stance against Iran. Democrats are more or less in favor of that as well," he explained. "The one sticking point is that the Obama administration put into place the (Iran nuclear deal) treaty that allowed for there to be some degree of international oversight in what Iran was doing with their nuclear weapons program. That was something that President Trump undid when he was in office, and Democrats want that to be put back into place. They are willing to blame (Trump) for some of what's happening now and the kind of increase in violence in the Middle East."
Whatever issue is being debated, Rottinghaus said that each candidate is going to focus on what fires up their base the most and stick with that narrative.
"So Republicans are going to spend a lot of time talking about the border and why it's a problem and the Democrats are going to spend a lot of time talking about abortion and why the rights need to be restored," he said.
Which brings us back to the current presidential polls. No matter whether Harris or Trump leads in any given poll on any given day, Rottinghaus said there is never going to be a perfect predictor of who is going to win this election.
"For most people, the best strategy is to look at the average of the polls, because that's probably the closest to where reality is," he said. "Each individual poll is just a kind of snapshot of that time that the average of those polls is probably closer to reality. That's about the best people can do. But you know, polls don't mean votes, and so it's only one piece of a way to understand public preferences."
"Basically, what it comes down to is voter turnout," Rottinghaus continued. "Yeah, and you know, that's the cliche, but the ultimate poll is the electorate. (Voters) are going to have to turn out, and that's the only way for us to know for sure."
