As the polls open, nearly every major prognosticator predicts Vice President Kamala Harris will win the election.

Nate Silver’s latest prediction now gives Harris a slight lead in the Electoral College, giving her a 50 percent chance of victory, compared to former President Donald Trump’s 49.6 percent. The model shows that Harris won 271 Electoral College votes, compared to Trump’s 267.

This marks a shift from Silver’s previous predictions, in which Trump had a narrow lead. On Monday, Silver’s prediction favored Trump with a 50.4 percent chance versus Harris’s 49.2 percent, and the day before Trump had a 52.6 percent chance of winning versus Harris’s 47 percent.

Other aggregators repeat the close race, but similarly give Harris a slight advantage. FiveThirtyEight currently gives her a 50 percent chance of winning, predicting 270 Electoral College votes for Harris versus 268 for Trump.

Meanwhile British newspaper The Economist predicts Harris will win 276 votes to Trump’s 262 — a scenario also reflected by forecaster Larry Sabato. Race to the White House predicts she will win 275 electoral votes.

Her biggest victory is predicted by CNanalysis, which predicts the vice president will win 308 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 230, giving Harris 70 percent of the win.

The only forecasters showing that Trump is expected to win are DecisionDeskHQ, which shows that Trump is expected to win 276 votes to Harris’s 262, and JL Partners, which shows that the former president is expected to win 287 Electoral College votes to the 251 by Harris. DecisionDeskHQ shows Trump has a 54 percent chance of winning, while JL Partners shows he has a 60 percent chance of winning.

Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns via email for comment.

Since Harris became the Democratic nominee for president in late July, polls have been close, with Harris leading for most of August and September, but in early October the vice president saw her chances plummet as Trump made gains in a crucial battleground. states. The race has remained pretty much the same since then.

Recent polls show that the candidates are separated by only 1 and 2 points. For example, the latest AtlasIntel poll, conducted between November 3 and 4, shows Trump with a 1-point lead, while the latest Research Co. poll, conducted between November 2 and 3, shows Harris with a 2-point lead.

In both polls, the candidate’s lead is within the margin of error. Harris and Trump are also within 1 and 2 points of each other in every swing state, according to FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver.

Overall, FiveThirtyEight’s tracker puts Harris 1.2 points ahead, while Silver’s tracker puts her 1 point ahead, showing how narrow the margins are in this election.

“When I say that the odds in this year’s presidential race are as close to 50/50 as possible, I am not exaggerating,” Silver wrote in his most recent newsletter.

But FiveThirtyEight warned that while the polls are close, it doesn’t necessarily mean the overall outcome will be close.

“A close race at the polls does not necessarily mean the outcome will be close,” the pollsters wrote on their website.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis, election polls in U.S. elections for the presidency, House of Representatives, Senate and Governors have missed the final vote margin by an average of about six points since 1998.

For example, in 2020, polls showed President Joe Biden with a strong lead over President Trump. Just before the election, Biden led by 8.4 points in the FiveThirtyEight average. Ultimately, he won the popular vote by less than 4.5 points – just enough for an Electoral College victory.

Similarly, FiveThirtyEight gave Hillary Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning in 2016, but she ultimately lost the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote.

Scott Keeter, a senior fellow at the Pew Research Center, told us Newsweek this week, the 2020 and 2016 polls were inaccurate as Trump supporters opted out of surveys due to distrust in institutions like the mainstream media and polling places.

However, during the 2022 midterm elections, election errors averaged just 4.8 points, marking the most accurate cycle in 25 years. If this cycle’s polls lag by a similar margin, the resulting impact could be decisive.

For example, if the polls underestimate Harris by 4.8 points in the seven key swing states, she would win them all, collecting 319 electoral votes to Trump’s 219. Conversely, if the polls underestimated Trump by that same number, he would win the battleground. states and obtained 312 electoral votes.

Experts believe the polls will be more accurate this year because adjustments now better take into account likely Trump supporters who were previously underrepresented in the polls.

“Many pollsters today use past voting history to correct for Trump’s underestimation,” Cliff Young, president of Ipsos Polling, previously said. Newsweek.