Harris campaign says race close because of many ‘undecided’ voters

Washington:  The Harris campaign has said that it believes the polls showed the presidential race so close in the battleground states because “many people are still undecided”.

“Every single one of our top battleground states is polling within the margin of error,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, head of the Harris campaign, said in a note. “I’ve been doing campaigns for a very long time, and I have never seen all seven battlegrounds this close.

“What these polls are telling us is that many people are still undecided. Our job is to make sure we are talking to those voters about the choice they have in front of them and persuading them.”

The 2024 presidential contest between Vice-President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and former US President Donald Trump, a Republican, will be decided by the voters of seven battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

Whether trailing or leading, the gap between them in the polls is within the margin of error.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of polls, the contests in Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania are “even”, Harris is ahead by one percentage point in Michigan and Trump is ahead by one percentage point in North Carolina, two percentage points in Georgia and Arizona.

As the candidates crisscross these states by themselves and with allies and surrogates, more than 48 million have already voted nationally either at early voting stations or through postal ballot, according to the Florida University’s Election Lab.

Democrats have traditionally voted early, but this time Republicans have not been far behind, turning out in large numbers that was noted by O’Malley Dillon.

Trump delivered his campaign’s closing argument in a rally at New York’s iconic Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Harris is slated to deliver hers from the Ellipse on the grounds of the US Capitol, which is home to US congress and where the former president had addressed his supporters on January 6, 2020 before they had marched into the building to prevent a joint sitting of the two chambers from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.

–IANS