Just days before the US presidential election, polls are showing a near-perfect tie between the candidates. However, the overall trend of recent months has been a steady decline in the advantage Kamala Harris had when she first entered the race, which has now nearly disappeared.
Underestimating Trump's electoral potential has been a persistent issue for American Democrats. In 2016, they attributed his success to Russian meddling or Hillary Clinton's weaknesses. In 2020, they failed to grasp how close the results between Trump and Biden turned out to be and how many Americans questioned the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. Only in the final stages of the current race has there been a realisation that the American electoral map of voter preferences has shifted.
Democrats are losing support among the traditional socio-demographic groups that once made up their base. Previously, Republicans were predominantly a party of white and affluent Americans, while people of colour and lower-income voters leaned Democratic. Today, however, the main divide is based on education level. The Democratic Party is becoming the party of educated and progressively minded Americans, increasingly disconnected from 'average' America and more focused on cultural and values-based issues rather than class or race.
Meanwhile, Trump no longer appears as a random agitator who broke into politics, but rather as the leader of a cultural counter-revolution – a rebellion of 'ordinary Americans' against the radical progressivism of the Democratic elite. Political debates are less and less about practical policies and more about disagreements tied to cultural identity, making them, or at least appearing to make them, existential.
People on opposing sides of this divide now have fundamentally different views on what is right, true, and good. This dynamic leads to a 'spiral of polarisation,' transforming elections, for both sides, into a last stand and a trigger for irreversible change. However, this focus on cultural identity and the resulting divide is not solely an American issue. A similar split is fueling the steady rise of right-wing populists across Europe.
The fact that, just a week before the election, the candidates are polling nearly identically indicates that this clash of identities will not be resolved on 5 November – the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November – regardless of who is declared or considers themselves the victor of the election.
Just days before the US presidential election, polls are showing an almost perfect tie between the candidates. A poll conducted by The New York Times / Siena College in late October revealed that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump supporters were evenly split at 48% to 48%. The national polling average calculated by the FiveThirtyEight project, showed Harris with a 1.3 percentage point lead, down from 2.4 points two weeks prior. At the same time, some statistical models are indicating a growing advantage for Trump as Election Day approaches. According to a statistical simulation by FiveThirtyEight, Trump's chance of winning stands at 51%, compared to 49% for Harris. According to The Economist's predictive model, a week before the election, Trump’s odds of returning to the White House at 56%, even though just ten days earlier Harris had a 56% chance, which shrank to 44% over the same period. By 1 November, The Economist projected Trump and Harris’s chances at 51% and 48%, respectively, noting that such figures effectively make the election a coin toss, with no clear polling advantage for either candidate.
In July, following her official nomination, Harris's rating increased by 3%, drawing support from respondents who had previously been undecided or backed third-party candidates. However, this consolidation also led to further mobilisation among Trump supporters. Consequently, Harris’s support stabilised, while Trump's ratings continued to climb through late October, narrowing the gap between the candidates.
Trump's advantage in swing states is also reflected in The New York Times' statistical model, which shows Trump leading in four states, Harris ahead in two (Wisconsin and Michigan), and the candidates tied in Nevada. The Washington Post's analysis based on national polling data suggests Harris holds a slight edge over Trump in four swing states, while Trump leads in three. The New York Times' chief political analyst, Nate Cohn reports Harris's lead over Trump in national polls had shrunk to less than one percentage point a week before the election, marking her smallest advantage since mid-August. According to The Economist, Harris would need to win the national vote by at least 2.5 percentage points to secure sufficient support in the Electoral College.
The outcome remains uncertain, but the dominant view among pollsters and analysts is that Harris's advantage has steadily diminished over the past two months.
Trump’s victory in the 2016 election was regarded by Democrats as an anomaly and a fluke. They convinced themselves and America that he won, first, perhaps due to covert Russian operations, and second, because Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate who failed to mobilise the electorate. In their view, a tactical error by the Democrats had inadvertently led to Trump’s presidency. Thus, Joe Biden's victory in 2020 seemed to them like an undeniable fact, contested only by misguided people or malicious actors from Trump's circle, prompted by Trump himself. Democrats paid insufficient attention to several key points: the fact that, once again in 2020, polls underestimated Trump’s actual performance, the widespread scepticism and doubts among many Americans regarding Biden’s victory, and the reality that, even after investigations and court proceedings supposedly vindicated their assessment of the election outcome and its aftermath, the number of Republicans doubting Biden's win not only didn't decrease but actually grew.
As the current election approached, and it became clear that, despite all the efforts of 'enlightened' America, Trump's star had not faded and he had a strong chance of returning to the White House, Democrats found a new explanation for this anomaly: Biden's age and physical condition, which they argued hindered voter mobilisation. In other words, they continued to hold the belief that under normal circumstances, a Trump victory was impossible and could only happen, as in 2016, due to their own tactical errors.
A reevaluation began only a couple of weeks before the election, when it became evident that Harris’s initial advantage, gained after entering the race, was not as significant as it first seemed and had nearly evaporated over two months. Today, numerous polls and commentators agree on the Democrats' core issue: the support for the Democratic candidate is declining among traditionally loyal socio-demographic groups. And this trend hasn’t stopped; it continues.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton received 92% of the African American vote, and Joe Biden secured 90% in 2020. Now, however, according to an October poll by The New York Times / Siena College, only 78% of African Americans are willing to support Kamala Harris. The decline in support comes despite the Harris campaign releasing a mid-October plan to support the African-American population, primarily men. Meanwhile, according to a Reuters / Ipsos poll, 18% of African-American men are willing to vote for Trump, up from 14% four years ago, and 8% of African-American women, up from 4%.
Similar trends are evident in other traditionally Democratic-leaning groups. For example, support for the Democratic candidate among Asian-American voters has dropped from 51% in 2020 to 38% in 2024. Among Arab American voters, according to the nationwide Arab American Vote 2024 poll, Harris’s rating (41%) is 18 percentage points lower than Biden’s in 2020. For the first time, Trump’s support in this group has surpassed that of the Democrats, at 42%, and among those most likely to vote, Trump leads with 46% to Harris’s 42%. Overall, the share of Arab Americans identifying as Democrats has fallen from 52% in 2016 to 40% in 2020 and 38% in 2024.
By mid-October, Trump had nearly eliminated the Democrats’ long-standing advantage among Hispanic men, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. While he trailed Biden among this group by 19 percentage points in 2020, his gap with Harris is now just 2 points. Among registered Hispanic voters – the fastest-growing segment of the American electorate – Trump enjoys support from 37% (up from 30% in 2020), while Harris holds 51% (compared to Biden’s 54% four years ago). Combined, these three groups make up 39% of the U.S. population: 19.1% are Hispanic, 12.6% African American, and 6.1% Asian. Overall, these groups have shifted about 5% toward Trump since the 2020 election.
At the same time, Harris has gained ground among white women: in 2020, Trump had a 12-point lead in this demographic over Biden, but now the Republican advantage has shrunk to 3 points. Trump still leads Harris among all white voters by 9 points, though his advantage over Biden in 2020 was 14 points.
Yet, it’s not just about race and ethnicity. Although the Biden administration's policies have been geared toward benefiting the working class, polls suggest Harris is on track to earn the lowest support from this group for a Democratic candidate in decades, falling below Biden’s 2020 performance. As Fareed Zakaria wrote in a column for The Washington Post, today’s struggles for the Democratic Party are rooted in profound societal shifts over recent decades, where social class, race, and economic status play a diminishing role in determining political orientation. A few decades ago, Republicans drew mainly from wealthy and white demographics, while people of colour and lower-income voters leaned Democratic. Now, the main divide is based on education: more educated voters tend to support Harris, while working-class voters have become the new base of the Republican Party.
This shift marks a deep transformation in the American political landscape, as confirmed by a Pew Research Center study. Previously, political preferences were shaped primarily by gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. Now, demographic profiles, education levels, and gender have become key factors, most significantly altering the Democratic electorate. By 2023, the percentage of Americans with higher education had risen to 40%, with most of them voting Democratic. Meanwhile, 63% of white voters without a college degree now prefer Republicans. Women still mostly support Democrats (51% to 44%), while men lean Republican (52% to 46%). Younger voters tend to back Democrats, while the majority of those over 60 align with Republicans. Rural voters have increasingly shifted to the Republican side: in 2008, Barack Obama captured half of the rural vote, but now Republicans hold a 25-point advantage over Democrats. Conversely, urban voters remain largely Democratic.
The factors determining political identity have changed.
Fareed Zakaria believes that Democrats are losing ground because they haven't paid enough attention to these societal changes and still hold the belief that the working class has been misled by the right into voting against their own interests. However, The Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid argues that the issue is deeper and lies in the transformed identity of the Democratic Party, now dominated by people with higher incomes and advanced education. From the end of World War II until 2012, the wealthiest 5% of white Americans were most likely to vote Republican. This has drastically changed: now, the top 5% are the least inclined to vote Republican. Meanwhile, Democrats are losing white working-class voters at a 2-to-1 ratio, Hamid points out.
The number of Americans with a bachelor’s degree has grown exponentially, and higher education is strongly linked to liberal views on cultural issues. For instance, 45% of college graduates believe it is crucial to use a person’s chosen gender pronouns, compared to only 29% of those without a degree. In other words, the Democratic Party and its electorate are becoming more socially progressive and increasingly defining themselves along cultural, rather than class, divides. This widens the values gap not only between Democrats and Republicans but also between Democrats and 'average' Americans, of whom more than 60% still lack a college degree.
For a long time, higher education and the associated social progressivism were considered unassailable advantages. What could a simple American say to challenge a Yale graduate? Yet Trump defied this notion, spearheading a kind of cultural counterrevolution. He demonstrated how an average American could confront and put a Yale graduate in their place. This strategy not only won him the presidency in 2016 but continues to strengthen his support, despite scandals and attacks from the educated American establishment, which only serve to further mobilise his base.
This mobilisation has broader effects. In the early 2010s, the most heated disputes between Democrats and Republicans revolved around issues like health care reform and tax rates, Hamid notes. Such disagreements may divide but don’t necessarily breed hostility. Today, people on opposite sides have fundamentally different views of what is right, true, and good. Debates increasingly focus less on concrete policies and more on disagreements perceived as existential.
This, in turn, is leading to a ‘spiral of radicalisation’, Hamid notes in another column. In one NBC News poll, roughly 80% of both Democrats and Republicans said the opposing party poses a 'threat that, if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it.' The leading candidates in the current election echo these sentiments. Trump supporters label Harris a communist, while Harris and her supporters call Trump a fascist. If both sides insist that the stakes are this high and that there won't be another chance to set things right, then rejecting election results seems like a more natural strategy than conceding defeat. This is a different kind of conflict altogether.
This intense focus on cultural issues, increasingly framed as existential or identity-based, is not just an American phenomenon. A similar divide is visible in the rise of so-called right-wing populists across Europe. The nature of this division explains why Trump feels more comfortable engaging with Viktor Orbán than with his fellow Americans who hold democratic views and why he speaks with a certain warmth about Putin while expressing open hostility toward Democrats. Moreover, paradoxically, the attacks from Trump and his supporters on Democrats and their social progressivism resonate with criticisms directed at all of America by countries in the Global South.
The culture war is not confined to America – in some ways, it has engulfed the entire world. And it won’t end on that day – the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November—when the official results of the US election are announced, no matter who emerges or claims to be the victor. The candidates’ equality in the polls suggests that 5 November is likely to be not a day of resolution but a day of further intensification of the conflict.