As the last few weeks of campaigning for president come to a close, the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, and the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, saw their lead in the polls shrink. The race is getting closer, but who is ahead?
Early voting across the whole state of Ohio began Tuesday and will go on until November 3, just over a month before the 2024 presidential election.
Who is leading the polls in Ohio, Harris or Trump?
According to polling statistics from The New York Times, Trump has a slight lead over Harris in Ohio. As of Oct. 10, Trump has 51% of the vote, while Harris only has 45%.
According to bets made on the crypto trading site Polymarket, Trump has a much better chance of winning in Ohio (92%), as reported by USA TODAY.
Who is winning the presidential election?
Here’s how some of the major polling services see the race as of Oct. 8:
- ABC News Project 538 shows Harris leading in the national polls at 48.5% to Trump’s 45.9%, compared to Harris 48.1% to Trump 45.5% four weeks ago .
- 270towinshows Harris leading the national polls by 2.7% over Trump, compared to Harris 0.9% over Trump four weeks ago.
- RealClearPolling shows the betting odds are in Harris’ favor with a spread of +2.0 over Trump compared to Harris favor of +1.4 over Trump four weeks ago .
- Polymarket , a crypto-trading platform, is expressing odds by the betting public, in favor of Trump over Harris by 5.9 percentage points compared to Trump over Harris by 5.9 percentage points four weeks ago.
Odds and polls are always changing. As of 9:10 a.m. on Tuesday, October 8, 2024, these numbers were shown.
How accurate have election odds or polls been in past presidential elections?
The Conversation, a nonprofit news organisation, says that since 1866, the favourite has only lost twice.
The Week writes that polling has a harder track record because different surveys asking different types of people can often lead to bigger error margins.
Pew Research says that mistakes in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections have made people less trusting of public opinion polls.
A lot of polls, including the ones that put Donald Trump in the lead, were wrong about how strong the Republican candidates were in both of these general elections.
Key Ohio voting dates
Ohio is now letting people vote early. Before the general election on November 5, here are some important dates:
- Oct. 29: Deadline for absentee ballot applications.
- Nov. 4: Absentee ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by this day.
- Nov. 5: Election Day.
- Nov. 9: Absentee ballots mailed on or before Nov. 4 must arrive at boards of elections by this day to be counted.
