Presidential Election Polls Before Election Day

The General Election to determine the next president of the United States will take place on Election Day, November 5, 2024. Early voting—both in-person and mail-in ballot—has begun in most states. Who will win the election: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? For months, pollsters have been surveying potential voters to find out. 

What Do the Polls Suggest? 

Many polling sites post and update their polling averages based on their best estimates of voter information. Here are some of the top pollsters and their national presidential predictions. 

What Do the Numbers Mean? 

As you can see, the polls suggest that the election results are either tied or very close. What these polls don’t say with this data is which state the voter lives in. This is important because the United States determines the presidential winner by the number of Electoral College delegates awarded. This is based on how the popular vote totals are counted in each state. One of the candidates needs to reach or exceed 270 electoral votes to win the presidential election. Each candidate can currently claim about 200 electoral votes. However, seven “swing” states (and their electoral votes) are very close in polling data. No one willbe able to tell a winner until every vote is counted on Election Day.  

How Are Polls Conducted? 

Pollsters use phone or online surveys to question voters about their choices of candidates and issues. But only a small fraction of voters are surveyed. Therefore, the polling companies apply mathematical formulas to the small representative samples to make general pre-election predictions in states or at the national level. They also make sure to survey voters of different ages and levels of education. Although polling averages are often accurate, they can also be—and have been—wrong. Thus, each poll includes a “margin of error” that states how much the poll might differ from reality. The margin of error for the polls listed above vary from plus or minus two-to-three percentage points. 

What Do You Think? Based on the polls above, who do you think will be the next U.S. president?