The 2024 presidential election is coming down to the wire, with no clear winner in sight

By Jonathan D. Salant / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WASHINGTON — Maybe you can call it the coin-flip election.

Just over two weeks before Election Day, polls show the 2024 presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump to be within the margins of error, meaning neither has a statistical advantage over the other. 

In baseball, it would be a tie game heading into extra innings. In horse racing, the thoroughbreds would be neck-and-neck coming down the home stretch. If this was soccer, we’d be watching penalty kicks to determine the winner.

“It can go either way,” Republican consultant Nachama Soloveichik said. “I’m not going to be surprised.”

The people the candidates need to convince the most live in Pennsylvania and a handful of other battleground states — the other two Blue Wall Midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, the Southern states of Georgia and North Carolina, and the Western states of Arizona and Nevada.

“It’s going to come down to individual states,” Ms. Soloveichik said. “Most of them will be close. Pennsylvania is going to be very close. There's always a chance for a late October surprise but millions of people have already voted and will be voting over the next two weeks, so turnout’s going to matter. When you’re talking about such close margins, it's just a question of who can eke it out in these close states.”

Candidates are blanketing Pennsylvania with nonstop advertisements, phone calls and door-knocking to get their supporters to the polls. Since Jan. 1, $518 million has been spent on ads in the Keystone State on the presidential contest, according to AdImpact. That’s more than in any other state.

There’s a good reason for that: Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes are the biggest prize of the battlegrounds, and no Democrat has won the White House without carrying the Keystone State since 1948. Trump was elected president only after winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in 2016.

“You can control what you can control,” Democratic consultant Modia Butler said. “You can control the amount of money, the infrastructure, and the plan you put in place. Then you hope and pray all the work, all the attention, all the capacity you built, the message you deliver, resonates enough.”

So far, neither Ms. Harris nor Trump lead by more than 2 percentage points in any of the swing states, and all of the polls are within a normal-sized error of 3.5 percentage points, according to the Washington Post poll average.

Based on the polls, “it’s remarkable that neither campaign has been able to lock up any of the seven states in question,” said Izzy Klein, a Democratic strategist.

Republican strategist Craig Snyder said the polls may be doing nothing more than mirroring the existing red/blue divide.

“The polls have gotten better at modeling what turnout is going to look like,”said Mr. Snyder, a former chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and author of a new political novel, “Guile.”  “This polarization in the United States to a Red team and a Blue team is a hole that we keep digging instead of trying to climb out of it. It could be that the polls are reality reflecting that this direction toward hyperpolarization has just continued.”

‘Trump is immovable’

Trump, trying to become the first president since Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms, survived two impeachments, four indictments, 34 felony convictions and a dozen primary opponents to get this far.

The national Real Clear Politics poll average has Trump at 47.2%. That’s close to 46.9% of the vote he received in 2020 and the 45.9% in 2016.

“Trump is immovable,” Republican consultant Mike DuHaime said. “There’s nobody in America left who doesn’t have an opinion about Donald Trump.”

Ms. Harris, who is at 49.2% in the Real Clear Politics poll average, replaced President Joe Biden on the ballot, when he ended his re-election campaign after the primaries ended and he turned in a dismal performance at his debate with Trump. That increased already-serious concerns about his age and ability to serve another four years in the Oval Office.

For the most part, this will be a base election, with each side working to get their most loyal supporters to the polls.

“By now, it’s about execution, execution, execution,” Mr. Butler said. “The  plan is in place. They know what they have to do. It’s about who can execute from now to Nov. 5 better than the other candidate.”

The Harris campaign has 50 field offices in Pennsylvania; the Trump campaign more than two dozen. Combine that with paid staffers and volunteers canvassing door-to-door, distributing literature or making phone calls.

“The efforts on the ground are what’s going to seal the deal,” Republican strategist Charlie Gerow said. “The Republican efforts are working. Registrations for Republicans are dramatically up. Absentee ballot applications are dramatically up and the enthusiasm gap at this point is very significant.”

It’s not door-knocking or targeted ads that matter, said Joel Rubin, a Pittsburgh native and Democratic consultant.

Sometimes, it’s nothing more than having friends talking to friends in person and through social media or chat rooms, he said.

“It’s basically a friend telling a friend telling a friend,” Mr. Rubin said. “It doesn't come from a politician or an ad but someone you trust.”

‘It’s all about her’

The need to get out the base is one of the reasons you see Ms. Harris paying so much attention to Black men, Mr. Butler said. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed Ms. Harris getting the support of 83% of likely Black female voters but just 70% of likely Black male voters. In 2020, Mr. Biden defeated Trump among Black voters, 92% to 8%, according to the Pew Research Center.

“She obviously needs to make sure her base turns out,” Mr. Butler said. “You need the totality of the African American community to turn out. If you listen to what they're saying, they're saying they haven't been paid attention to.”

While Trump’s support is baked in and unlikely to shift, Ms. Harris has other ways of increasing her support, according to strategists of both parties.

“The question is can Harris make that sale to those voters who are just wary of her. It’s all about her at this point,” Mr. DuHaime said. “She still has time to make that sale but she hasn't done that.”

Mr. DuHaime said Ms. Harris needs to be out doing interviews. In recent days, she’s been on Fox News, on “Charlamagne Tha God’s radio program, on Stephen Colbert’s late-night program, and on television’s “The View.”

“She’s got to get out more,” he said. “She’s got to be put in more vulnerable positions and shows that she's good at it. She needs those moments that are a little less scripted.”

It remains to be seen whether abortion rights is the Democratic panacea it was in the 2022 midterm elections, where the electoral losses that usually come to the party that controls the White House failed to materialize for the most part and a threatened Red Wave never happened.

Trump fulfilled a 2016 campaign promise and nominated three Supreme Court justices that voted to change federal law for the constitutional right to abortion, while Ms. Harris has been a long-time champion of reproductive rights.

Abortion has been a big issue among suburban women, including those in the Philadelphia suburbs who could help decide who carries the state next month.

“Are they still being moved by that,” Mr. Butler said. “That’s what saved Democrats in the 2022 midterms.”

Ms. Harris also has a chance to woo disaffected Republicans, especially those who backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Pennsylvania primary this spring and so far remain uncommitted, said Mr. Snyder, national director of Haley Voters for Harris.

On Tuesday, Ms. Harris appeared in Bucks County with more than 100 Republicans who have endorsed her candidacy.

Ms. Harris has “really made this pitch for voters from the other party,” said Mr. Snyder, whose group is running ads targeting Republicans or GOP-leaning independents who are dissatisfied with Donald Trump and are open to the possibility of voting for Harris.”

The remaining campaign will be fought over a small sliver of voters who will decide the next president, Mr. Rubin said.

“I still think there is a very fluid 5-to-6% out there that is still up for grabs,” Mr. Rubin said. “We call them late-breaking undecideds. The final stretch matters. It’s how you close all the way until Election Day. Every day is an opportunity to convince people.”