The latest polls conducted for the US presidential elections next November indicate a slight advantage for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris against the republican Donald Trump.
This is a new scenario after Joe Biden’s resignation to stand for election and Harris’ official designation as the Democratic candidate. According to the specialized site FiveThirtyEight (sometimes called 538), would be the first time that polls have given the Democratic candidate the advantage.
The political analysis and polling blog, which weighs up the different electoral surveys in the United States, now shows a slight advantage for Harris over Trump, of 1.5% and detects a similar change in the key states.
The analysis covered the different polls carried out in the country from July 24 to this Sunday. If the difference at the beginning was 0.8 points in favor of Harris, the Democrat’s advantage has now widened to 1.5 points (45.1% for Harris versus 43.6% for Trump).
The 538 site, named after the number of electors in the United States Electoral College, was founded on March 7, 2008, as a poll aggregator and blog by analyst Nate Silver. In August 2010 the blog was acquired by The New York Times and renamed as FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver’s Political Calculus.
In July 2013 ESPN acquired FiveThirtyEighthiring Silver as managing editor and contributor for ESPN.com. The new publication was launched on March 17, 2014.
Since then FiveThirtyEight has been covering a wide range of topics, including politics, sports, science, economics and popular culture. According to Wikipediain 2018 operations were transferred from ESPN to the sister company ABC News (also owned by The Walt Disney Company).
During the 2008 United States primaries and presidential election, the site compiled polling data using a unique methodology derived from Silver’s expertise in baseball statistics to “weight polls with comparable demographics.”
The site and its founder are best known for their statistical election forecasting models, including the one for the 2012 presidential election, where FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner in all 50 states.
FiveThirtyEight has won many awards. These include the Bloggie Awards for best political blog in 2009, as well as the Webby Awards for best political blog in 2012 and 2013. In 2016, when the site came under the ownership of ESPN, FiveThirtyEight won the award for best data journalism site awarded by the Global Editors Network.
Following Biden’s announcement that he is withdrawing from the presidential race ahead of the November 5 election, The president offered his support to his vice president Kamala Harris“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all of my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a message posted on his personal account on the social network X.
“My first decision as the party’s candidate in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my vice president. And it has been the best decision I have ever made,” the president said, setting out the possible nomination of his current vice president, the first woman to hold that position in the country’s history.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be our party’s nominee this year. Democrats: it’s time to unite and defeat Trump. Let’s do it,” Biden concluded.
In his first week of campaigning, Harris managed to raise 200 million dollarsHis team announced that the bulk of the donations (66%) came from first-time contributors in the 2024 election cycle who sent their money after President Biden dropped out of the race.
Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, said in a memo that “Vice President Harris’ momentum and energy are real,” and predicted that “this election will be very close and will be decided by a small number of voters in just a few states.”
Eight days after taking over from Biden after he dropped out of the presidential race, the 59-year-old lawyer has recruited some 170,000 volunteers to support her campaign.
