The mood over who will win the 2024 presidential election may have changed — but with just two weeks until Election Day, the polls are as unclear as ever.

Polling averages show that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are nearly tied in most key swing states. And while Trump’s poll numbers have improved slightly in recent weeks, that’s not enough to give him a clear lead. At least not yet.

On average, Trump has a small lead, usually between 1 and 2 points, in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. To win the presidency, however, he will have to break the ‘blue wall’ by winning one of Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. As of Monday afternoon, these states are still about the same on average.

There haven’t been many high-quality swing-state polls in recent weeks, and the top-rated pollsters will all likely release new numbers toward the end of the campaign. Once they do, we can get a better idea of ​​where the race stands.

If the polling averages continue to show an extremely close race after a final infusion of high-quality polling, it will only increase the uncertainty about what will happen. Polling errors – where one candidate or party is systematically underestimated – of the magnitude of a few points are common.

It could be that the polls are once again underestimating Trump, as they did in swing states in 2016 and 2020. It’s also possible that pollsters have corrected their previous bias — or even overcorrected, putting them at risk of making a mistake which Harris underestimates. We won’t know until the votes are counted.

To summarize, there are seven swing states that will very likely determine the outcome of the election (with every other state expected to vote decisively for Trump or Harris). Listed in order of electoral votes, they are:

If Harris can win 44 electoral votes in these swing states, she will win the presidency. Trump would need 51 electoral votes from the same states to win. The polls say these swing states are – brace yourselves – very close!

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina all match almost exactly in the New York Times polling averages, which show Trump in Georgia at 1 and Arizona at 2. Nate Silver’s poll averages have similar results.

There’s a slightly rosier story for Harris in the Washington Post averages, which show her at 2 in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. On the other hand, the RealClearPolitics averages show Trump with a lead of 2 points or less in all swing states.

But these differences are splitting hairs. None of these results are lopsided enough to inspire any real confidence about which way the outcome will go.

In contrast, the sentiments point more clearly in one direction: Democrats are showing increasing concern about Harris’ chances, while Republicans seem quite confident about Trump’s.

But the pre-election atmosphere would have told you that the Republican Party was headed for a landslide victory in 2022, that Biden would win overwhelmingly (rather than narrowly) in 2020, and that Trump had no chance of winning in 2016. all kinds of elusive conjectures and guesses just aren’t worth much.

Some point to supposed clues about the outcome in non-poll statistics, such as early voting numbers or prediction markets. But early voting numbers are a notoriously poor indicator of what will happen on Election Day. Prediction markets generally reflect conventional wisdom — and this year in particular, they may be skewed by a few big Trump fans.

Once we know the outcome, hindsight will be 20/20. We can all look back at clues that were supposedly hidden in plain sight, telling ourselves stories of how the outcome was accomplished all along. But for now, the race is simply too close to call.