The latest polls conducted for the upcoming presidential elections in November indicate a slight lead for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris over the Republican Donald Trump.
It is a new scenario following Joe Biden's decision not to run in the elections and the official nomination of Harris as the Democratic candidate. According to the specialized site FiveThirtyEight (sometimes referred to as 538), it would be the first time that polls indicate an advantage for the Democratic candidacy.
The political analysis and polling blog, which weighs the different electoral surveys in the United States, now shows a slight advantage for Harris over Trump, of 1.5%, and detects a similar change in key states.
The analysis covered the different surveys conducted in the country from July 24 until this Sunday. If the initial difference was 0.8 points in favor of Harris, currently the Democratic advantage has increased to 1.5 points (45.1% for Harris compared to 43.6% for Trump).
The site 538, which takes its name from the number of electors in the Electoral College of the United States, was founded on March 7, 2008, as a poll aggregator and blog by analyst Nate Silver. In August 2010, the blog was acquired by The New York Times and renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus.
In July 2013, ESPN acquired FiveThirtyEight, hiring Silver as editor-in-chief and contributor to ESPN.com. The new publication was launched on March 17, 2014.
Since that moment, FiveThirtyEight has covered a wide range of topics, including politics, sports, science, economics, and popular culture. According to Wikipedia, in 2018 the operations were transferred from ESPN to the sister company ABC News (also owned by The Walt Disney Company).
During the primaries and the presidential elections in the United States in 2008, the site compiled polling data using a unique methodology, derived from Silver's experience in baseball statistics to "weight the polls with comparable demographic data."
The site and its founder are mainly known for their statistical models of electoral forecasting, including the one for the 2012 presidential elections, where FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner in all 50 states.
FiveThirtyEight has won many awards. These include the Bloggie Awards for best political blog in 2009, as well as the Webby Awards for best political blog in 2012 and 2013. In 2016, when the site was acquired by ESPN, FiveThirtyEight won the award for best data journalism site awarded by the Global Editors Network.
After Biden's announcement of his withdrawal from the presidential race ahead of the elections on November 5, the president offered his support to his vice president Kamala Harris. “Fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden stated in a message posted on his personal account on the social media platform X.
"My first decision as the party's candidate in 2020 was to choose Kamala Harris as my vice president. And it has been the best decision I have made," asserted the president to affirm the possible nomination of his current vice president, the first woman to hold that position in the country's history.
"Today I want to offer all my support and backing for Kamala to be our party's candidate this year. Democrats: it's time to unite and defeat Trump. Let's do it," Biden concluded.
In her first week of campaigning, Harris managed to raise 200 million dollars. Her team announced that most of the donations (66%) come from first-time contributors in the 2024 electoral cycle who sent their money after President Biden dropped out of the race.
Michael Tyler, the campaign's communications director, stated in a memorandum that "the momentum and energy of Vice President Harris are real," and predicted that "this election will be very close and will be decided by a small number of voters in just a few states."
Eight days after taking over the baton from Biden after he withdrew from the presidential race, the 59-year-old lawyer has gathered about 170,000 volunteers to support her in her campaign.
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