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    The Polls Are Close. The Results Might Not Be.

    These two things are true about the presidential race: The polls currently show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump effectively tied. And close polls do not necessarily mean there will be a close result.This may feel counterintuitive, but the fact is that we are just a very normal polling error away from either candidate landing a decisive victory, especially in the Electoral College.This is a point my colleague Nate Cohn has made regularly in his election race updates over the last few weeks. But it bears repeating, because a lopsided result when there is an expectation of only razor-thin margins could further fan distrust in the polls and in the electoral process itself.“You can have a close election in the popular vote and somebody could break 315 Electoral College votes, which will not look close,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “Or you could get a popular vote that is five points” apart, he added, “which is, by today’s standards, a landslide — a word no one has used this year.”Since 1998, election polls in presidential, House, Senate and governor’s races have diverged from the final vote tally by an average of six percentage points, according to an analysis from FiveThirtyEight. But in the 2022 midterm elections, that average error was 4.8 points, making it the most accurate polling cycle in the last quarter of a century. If polls were off this year, in either direction, by the same margin, the winning candidate would score a decisive victory.Based on where the polling averages stood on Monday, if the polls are underestimating Ms. Harris by 4.8 points in each of the seven swing states, she would win every one of them, and a total of 319 electoral votes, compared with only 219 for Mr. Trump. If those same polls underestimate Mr. Trump by the same margin, he would win all the battleground states, for a total of 312 electoral votes. More

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    The Stakes of the Election

    Presidential campaigns are often scripted spectacles. They can overshadow policy ideas. So editors of The Morning asked reporters at The Times — who dig through tax records, travel to the southern border and study the science of climate change — to explain what Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s positions on several important issues might mean for the country.Their reporting revealed two drastically different trajectories for America.ImmigrationHarris embraced a bipartisan immigration bill that would have funded the border wall, empowered the president to restrict border crossings and modestly expanded legal immigration. She also supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.Trump promises a tougher crackdown on immigration than he carried out in his first term. He says he will mount the “largest deportation effort in American history,” using the military and law enforcement to remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the country.Read the full article.Presidential powerHarris hasn’t said anything to suggest she would expand presidential power, though she would likely use executive orders to push through some policies that fail to pass in Congress, as previous presidents have done.Trump, by contrast, wants to concentrate more power in the White House and advertises his authoritarian impulses. He has vowed to use the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries; to replace tens of thousands of civil servants with loyalists; and to deploy American troops on domestic soil to enforce the law.Read the full article.AbortionHarris has made abortion rights a central part of her candidacy. She has promised to sign a bill re-establishing Roe’s nationwide protection for abortion, and says she supports ending the Senate filibuster to pass that bill.Trump privately expressed his support for a national abortion ban earlier this year, but he later walked back that position and said last month that he would veto a federal ban. He now says he would leave abortion laws to the states.Read the full article.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Elecciones en Estados Unidos 2024, en vivo: Harris y Trump en su último día de campaña

    East Lansing, Mich.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLititz, Pa.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEast Lansing, Mich.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesMacon, Ga.Doug Mills/The New York TimesDetroit, Mich.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesHazle Township, Pa.Eric Lee/The New York TimesDetroit, Mich.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesKinston, N.C.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPontiac, Mich.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesEast Lansing, Mich.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLititz, Pa.Doug Mills/The New York Times📌 Mañana es el día de las elecciones. Estas son las últimas noticiasLa tumultuosa campaña presidencial de 2024 —en la que el presidente demócrata en funciones se retiró semanas antes de la convención de nominación de su partido y el candidato republicano sobrevivió a dos intentos de asesinato— concluye el lunes en un ambiente de extrema ansiedad e incertidumbre.El expresidente Donald Trump y la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris pasarán la mayor parte de su último día en Pensilvania, el estado de tendencia incierta que, con sus 19 votos electorales, se ha considerado casi desde el principio crítico para ganar la Casa Blanca.Los candidatos embarcarán en sus aviones de campaña bajo la sombra de un aluvión de encuestas finales que dan a entender que la contienda está pareja. El último sondeo del New York Times y el Siena College sobre Pensilvania, publicado el domingo, revela un empate, con el apoyo de ambos candidatos del 48 por ciento de los votantes probables.Para Trump, es una oportunidad de recuperar la Casa Blanca después de haber sido expulsado en 2020, un resultado que intentó anular. Para Harris, es una oportunidad de demostrar sus credenciales políticas después de una campaña inusualmente corta que le dio poco tiempo para ponerse al día y presentarse a los votantes.Trump comenzará el día con un mitin en Carolina del Norte antes de dirigirse a Pensilvania para dos mítines, en Reading y Pittsburgh, y después celebrará su acto final de campaña en Grand Rapids, Michigan, como hizo en 2016 y 2020. Harris está en Pensilvania desde la mañana hasta la noche, con actos en Scranton, Reading, Allentown y Pittsburgh. El mitin final de su campaña es en Filadelfia.Promete ser un final de carrera frenético. Han pasado 720 días desde que Trump anunció que volvería a postularse, 106 días desde que Biden puso fin a su propia campaña y 91 días desde que Harris se aseguró la nominación demócrata.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A November Surprise That’s Jostling the Markets

    The dollar, Treasury yields and crypto currencies have fallen, reversing some elements of the so-called Trump trade after an unexpected poll result. In the race’s final hours, a poll reminds the markets of the power of women voters.Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesDown to the wire Investors on Monday appear to be unwinding bets on the so-called Trump trade. In a major reversal, bonds have rallied and the dollar and crypto currencies have dipped in the race’s final hours.One explanation is a surprising new poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris, powered in part by support from women and older voters, edging ahead in deep-red Iowa — a finding that’s also led to a tightening of Donald Trump’s lead in political prediction markets.Why the change of heart? The highly regarded Ann Selzer/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll that was published on Saturday gave Harris a three-point advantage over Trump in the Hawkeye State, a Republican stronghold. “It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” Selzer said.Some urged caution about the poll. The Economist questioned whether the small sample size in Selzer’s poll made it a good predictor of what might happen in other states. And the Trump campaign pointed to another Iowa poll out this weekend that showed the former president with a 10-point lead over Harris.But Michael McDonald, a politics professor at the University of Florida who runs a vote-tracking site, pointed to similar dynamics in a recent Kansas poll.The Selzer poll has roiled the political betting markets. Following its publication, Trump’s odds of victory fell on platforms including Polymarket, after they had climbed in recent weeks, in tandem with crypto and other elements of the Trump trade.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Vivid Trump-Harris Contrast in the Campaign’s Grueling Final Days

    As Kamala Harris visited a church in Detroit on the last Sunday of the campaign, Donald J. Trump told supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after the 2020 election.It was the final Sunday of the campaign for president, and Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump were continuing to race across battleground states in their search for support. But in message and demeanor, Ms. Harris, the Democrat, and Mr. Trump, the Republican, could not have been more different.Ms. Harris began her day at a Black church in Detroit where she told congregants that the nation was “ready to bend the arc of history toward justice,” invoking the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Trump began his at an outdoor rally at an airport in Pennsylvania where, his shoulders slumped and his voice subdued, he threw out his prepared remarks to tell supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his loss to President Biden in 2020.The dueling scenes offered a contrast that captured just how differently these two candidates were using the final days of a campaign that a last round of polls suggested remained as tight as it was when their contest began in August.Mr. Trump went to Lititz, Pa., where, after announcing he was discarding his prepared speech so the “truth” could come out, he proceeded to deliver dark, rambling and at times angry remarks in which he attacked polls, assailed Democrats as “demonic,” and suggested he would not mind if reporters were shot.“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, ’cause, I don’t mind. I don’t mind,” he said as he called attention to the bulletproof glass barriers that have surrounded him at outdoor rallies since he was shot in July in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.Vice President Kamala Harris stopped at a Black-owned barbershop in Pontiac, Mich., on Sunday.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ¿Por qué a los demócratas les cuesta tanto vencer a Trump?

    El entorno político nacional no es tan propicio para una victoria de Harris como muchos podrían imaginar.Desde 2008, los demócratas han ocupado la Casa Blanca durante 12 de los 16 años. Vanessa Vick para The New York TimesPase lo que pase el martes, es justo decir que esta campaña no ha ido tan bien como esperaban los demócratas.Tras las elecciones intermedias, Donald Trump parecía estar acabado. Todavía puede perder, por supuesto, pero está claro que no ha quedado “descalificado” —como muchos esperaban— por el 6 de enero, por varias acusaciones penales o por la anulación de Roe contra Wade hecha por sus nombramientos para la Corte Suprema. Si los votantes descalificaron a algún candidato en 2024, fue al presidente en funciones, no al convicto que intentó anular las últimas elecciones.¿Cómo es que Trump sigue siendo tan competitivo? La respuesta más sencilla es que el entorno político nacional no es tan propicio para una victoria demócrata como muchos podrían imaginar.Los demócratas claramente se enfrentan a vientos en contra en estas elecciones. En la última encuesta del New York Times/Siena College, solo el 40 por ciento de los votantes aprobaba el desempeño del presidente Joe Biden, y solo el 28 por ciento decía que el país iba en la dirección correcta. Ningún partido ha conservado el control de la Casa Blanca cuando tantos estadounidenses estaban descontentos con el país o con el presidente.Las encuestas sugieren que el reto para los demócratas es aún más profundo. Por primera vez en décadas, los republicanos han igualado o superado la identificación partidista a nivel nacional. Las encuestas también muestran que los republicanos tienen ventaja en la mayoría de los temas clave, con la democracia y el aborto como excepciones significativas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Harris, at Final Michigan Rally, Offers Forward-Looking Vision

    Vice President Kamala Harris made her final appeal to Michigan voters at an energetic rally on a college campus on Sunday, sounding notes of unity while drawing implicit contrasts with her opponent.The event at Michigan State University was her first rally since becoming a candidate in which she did not say former President Donald J. Trump’s name.Instead, in the final hours of the race, she argued that her candidacy was focused on the future.“Our campaign has not been about being against something, it is about being for something,” she said. “A fight for a future with freedom and opportunity and dignity for all Americans.”In substance and tone, the appearance marked an even sharper-than-usual contrast with Mr. Trump, who began his day declaring that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House at the end of his term, intensified his unfounded claims of voter fraud and said “I don’t mind” if reporters are shot at.Their appearances came as polls show a close race across the battleground states, including in Michigan.The state is home to many Arab American and Muslim voters who are angered by the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza. Some have said they plan to vote third-party — and in some cases, for Mr. Trump — in response, a significant political risk for Ms. Harris in a closely divided state.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More