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Five days before Election Day, an estimated 55 million votes have already been cast in the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It’s possible the polls are wrong, but they’re unlikely to change much before this long and winding campaign cycle ends. Polling analysts, who use different methods to average the polls, have a slightly different view of the race. But without splitting hairs, it’s hard to see this as anything other than an incredibly close race in which late turnout trends and polling errors ultimately tell us what we can’t know right now: the identity of the 47th president.

In national polling averages, Kamala leads Harris by 1.4 percent per FiveThirtyEight; 1.1 percent per Nate Silver; 2 percent according to Washington After (where numbers are rounded) and one percent according to the New York Times (which also rounds numbers). RealClearPolitics, which unlike other media outlets does not weigh polls for accuracy or adjust them for partisan bias, shows Trump with a 0.4 percent lead nationally.

While national polls can help us understand trends and underlying dynamics, especially since they tend to have larger sample sizes, the fact that they have been so close for weeks, if not months, suggests that they cannot tell us who will actually win. The best we can do is extrapolate based on the relationship between the national popular vote and the number of electoral votes in previous elections. It makes Democrats nervous to see Harris leading Trump by less than 2 percent in the national polls, as Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 while winning the national popular vote by 2.1 percent, while Joe Biden barely won in 2020, despite that he won the popular vote with 4.5 percent. But we have no idea whether Trump will again have an advantage in the Electoral College, and if so, how big that advantage might be. (Harris may well perform better in the Electoral College than in the popular vote, as Barack Obama did in 2012.) And while we don’t know how electoral errors will diminish, it appears that the overall quality of the polls will be higher this year is than that of the elections. in the recent presidential elections.

So it is a better idea to focus on polls in the seven battleground states. But they too are generally crazy close. You can identify leaders in all seven when you dig into fractions. FiveThirtyEight currently shows Trump leading in four of those seven states (Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania), but by less than one point in Pennsylvania. Harris leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, but in the latter countries the lead is also less than one percent. In fact, Nevada is dead. A look at the rounded numbers of New York’s battleground states Times averages are eye-popping: it shows that the candidates have a shared lead of 48 percent in four states (Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin), while Trump leads with one percent in Pennsylvania, with two percent in Georgia and with three percent in North Carolina. A uniform swing of one percent could give Harris 292 electoral votes or Trump 312 electoral votes. The Washington AfterThe battleground averages make the same point in a slightly different way. They show Harris leading in four states (Michigan and Wisconsin with 2 percent and Nevada and Pennsylvania with less than one percent) and Trump in three states (Arizona and Georgia with two percent, and North Carolina with one percent). But then the After makes this crucial observation: “Each state is within a normal polling error of 3.5 points and could go either way.”

Both national and state polls suggest that the dynamics of the Harris-Trump battle remain fairly clear. On these issues, Trump is very strong among voters who care most about immigration, and continues to lead in most polls (albeit narrowing margins) among voters who focus on the economy. Meanwhile, Harris has a big lead among voters concerned about abortion rights. If you start with the split between Biden and Trump in the electorate from 2020, Harris has improved Democratic performance among college-educated white voters, while Trump has improved Republican performance among Black and Latino voters. Not surprisingly, this puts a small thumb on the scale for Harris in the states with relatively low non-white voting blocs (for example, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), and helps Trump in Sun Belt states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. But there are some conflicting undercurrents, with the Harris campaign working hard to get black men back into its column, while Trump’s entire voting strategy is based on mobilizing low-propensity voters from his core demographic groups (especially not -religious groups). college-educated white voters). The significant reaction this week from opinion leaders to insults about Puerto Ricans (a crucial demographic swing in extremely close and crucial Pennsylvania) from a comedian at Trump’s wild rally in New York City shows that events in the campaign can still shape the outcome to influence.

So it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the latest polls during the final days of the campaign and try not to get too distracted by potentially misleading data points and claims. For example, a lot of research is being done on trends in early voting. But beyond reflecting an overall decline in mail-in voting since the 2020 pandemic election, and Republicans’ efforts to encourage early in-person voting by their supporters, it’s hard to know what the numbers mean , as most early voters would otherwise. vote on Election Day and Democrats tend to be relatively “late” early voters. Some of the old, reliable indicators of presidential election outcomes are of limited use. Yes, the president’s approval rating currently sits at an abysmal 39.3 percent (according to FiveThirtyEight), but Kamala Harris has done a pretty good job of presenting herself as a “change candidate,” despite her own position. And yes, Harris has a small but stable advantage over Trump on personal preference (FiveThirtyEight has a ratio of 46.3 percent favorable to 47.8 unfavorable, while Trump’s is 43.3 percent favorable to 52.2 percent unfavorable is), but that also applied to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

If you had to pick a likely winner at this point, the official forecasters tend to lean toward Trump by the narrowest of margins (Nate Silver and Decision Desk HQ give Trump a 54 percent probability of winning; FiveThirtyEight gives him a 52 chance percent, and the Economist is even dead). Some analysts are looking at the race in terms of Electoral College scenarios that are not very clear; Nate Silver currently estimates Trump with 269.5 electoral votes and Harris with 268.5 (270 are needed for victory). Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball expresses conflicting “gut feelings,” citing trends that favor Trump but noting a sense of 2022 déjà vu that favors Harris.

In other words, it goes down to the wire.