Democrats panicking for no reason, pollsters say – US race nail-bitingly close
Polls suggest Harris and Trump still neck-and-neck, but Democrats pessimistic and Republicans confident
Less than a fortnight before polling day, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are locked in a nail-bitingly close US presidential election race, triggering pessimism among Democrats and confidence among Republicans – even though polls suggest both candidates have a near equal chance of entering the White House.
The Guardian’s 10-day polling tracking average shows Harris, the Democratic nominee and US vice-president, maintaining the single-point advantage over her Republican rival she had a week earlier, 47% to 46%.
Surveys for the seven battleground states are equally cliffhanging and provide little obvious clue as to who will reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes essential for victory.
According to poll averages, Harris leads by a single point in Michigan and by less than 1% in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump has a two-point lead in North Carolina and a one-point lead in Arizona.
Taken at face value, the figures are no disaster for Harris and hardly represent a triumph for Trump. If they match the outcome on 5 November, Harris will win a majority of votes in the electoral college.
But you would never know this from the jarringly different moods in the two camps.
Amid increasingly apocalyptic warnings from Harris that Trump represents fascism and dictatorship-in-waiting, her Democratic supporters have emitted an air of panic in recent days.
“A growing number of top Democrats tell us privately they feel Vice-President Kamala Harris will lose – even though polls show a coin-toss finish 11 days from now,” Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei wrote in Axios on Friday.
“Our private conversations with Democrats inside and outside her campaign reveal broad concern that little she does, says – or tries – seems to move the needle. Democrats are already starting to point fingers at who’d be more responsible for a Harris loss – President Biden for dragging his feet, or Harris herself. ‘Going down?’ a top Democratic official texted.”
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