Final NYT/Siena Poll Shows Harris, Trump Leading in Different Key

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The poll suggests each candidate has multiple pathways to secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are leading the race in different key swing states two days before the election, according to the final poll released by The New York Times/Siena College on Nov. 3.

The poll, which queried likely voters, found Harris is leading Trump 49–46 percent in Nevada, 48–46 percent in North Carolina, 49–47 percent in Wisconsin, and 48–47 percent in Georgia. Trump leads 49–45 percent in Arizona, while both candidates are tied 48–48 and 47–47 in Pennsylvania and Michigan, respectively.

Almost all polling results fall within the margins of error, making the race for the White House a statistical tie.

Across the seven battleground states in total, Harris leads by a narrow 1 point over Trump, 48–47 percent. FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average similarly has Harris leading by just 1 percent over the former president ahead of Election Day.

A tumultuous and unprecedented presidential race is coming to a close after the last four months saw two assassination attempts on Trump, President Joe Biden unexpectedly dropping out of the race following a poor debate performance, and Harris’s rapid rise to the top of the Democratic ticket to run a highly truncated campaign.

The NYT/Siena poll also showed that 50 percent of likely voters in the seven battleground states said they would “be more likely to vote for” a Democratic Senate candidate versus 45 percent who would back the Republican candidate.

The poll surveyed likely voters between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2, with a sample size of 7,879 and a plus or minus 1.3 percent margin of error. Individual states had a roughly plus or minus 3.5 percent margin of error.

The poll underscores how both Trump and Harris have multiple pathways to victory in securing the 270 votes needed to clinch the Electoral College, and by extension, the White House.

Among the 8 percent of respondents who said they had only recently decided who they would vote for in the 2024 election, 55 percent said Harris, and 44 percent said Trump. Another 11 percent of voters said they remain undecided or persuadable, dropping from 16 percent the previous month.

Among those surveyed by NYT/Siena, 40 percent said they had already voted. Harris is up among those who already voted by 8 points, while Trump has a slight advantage among those who say they will vote but haven’t yet cast a ballot.

Trump is also narrowing Harris’s former 4-point lead in previous Pennsylvania polls from NYT/Siena, with both candidates currently tied in the Keystone State—the largest of all the battlegrounds with 19 electoral votes.

In North Carolina, where early voting is surging, and more than half of voters said they had already cast a ballot, Harris is up by 8 percent among early voters. Even after the destruction after Hurricane Helene recently tore through the state, nine out of 10 voters in the state said the storm and the aftermath had no impact on their ability to cast a ballot.

More than 70 million Americans have already voted in the 2024 election, according to the University of Florida Election Lab.