11 days to US elections, Trump lead in four swing states

Eleven days before voters head out to vote, polls show that Trump is leading in the battleground state while Harris is making appeals to middle-class Americans.

According to tracking data from the Election Lab at the University of Florida, as of Thursday evening, more than 30 million voters had already cast their ballots. While this has broken early vote records in some states, the numbers, so far, are far below those from 2020, when – amid the COVID-19 pandemic – more than 100 million voters cast their ballots before Election Day.

Latest update from the polls

A new poll released by the Financial Times (FT) on Thursday showed that Trump has slightly surpassed Harris as the candidate Americans trust most with the economy.

Read also:13 days to election Harris, Trump maintain close margin in battleground states

The poll, conducted by the FT and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, found that 44 percent of respondents trust Trump to handle the economy, compared with 43 percent for Harris.

While national surveys provide valuable insights into voter sentiment, the ultimate winner will be decided by the Electoral College, which reflects the outcomes in individual states.

The seven key swing states that could determine the election are Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Together, these states account for 93 Electoral College votes.

Read also: Harris, Trump canvass for votes in wrap up campaign tour

Trump leads in  four swing state of Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania with at least 0.30 percentage.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s daily poll tracker, Harris’s support in Michigan has grown marginally, from less than half a percentage point to 0.7 percent. The vice president is marginally ahead in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Trump has a slight edge over Harris in Pennsylvania and holds a slightly larger lead in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. In Nevada, Trump and Harris are in a dead heat.

However, the results from each state fall within the margin of error of the polls, indicating that the race remains extremely close, and that these swing states could still shift in favour of either candidate.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris has appealed to middle-class America at a rally in Georgia, drawing a crowd of about 20,000.

Harris was not the only one the crowd had come for: Iconic musician Bruce Springsteen, former President Barack Obama, movie director Spike Lee and actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry were there to back her up.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump held rallies in Arizona and Nevada. In Arizona, he said he had watched Kamala Harris’s town hall this week on CNN and described her performance as “pathetic” – only the latest in a series of personal barbs that the candidates have traded in recent days.