Trump, Harris locked in virtual dead heat with just 4 days until Election Day

WASHINGTON

Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are locked in a dead heat with just four days to go until Election Day, according to polling data available on Friday.

An average of surveys compiled by the RealClearPolitics website has Trump ahead by just 0.3% nationally. The former president also leads in five of the seven pivotal battleground states.

His lead is widest in Georgia (+2.6%), and Arizona (+2.3%), while he wields a 1.5% lead in Nevada and North Carolina. The candidates are separated by less than 1% in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with Harris leading in the former two.

Almost all of the results fall within the polls' margins of error.

With a combined 44 Electoral College votes, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin formed a “blue wall” for President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina round out the seven key swing states heading into this election.

They are pivotal because, unlike most modern democracies, the US does not directly elect its presidents. Instead, the process plays out via the Electoral College, where 538 delegates cast their ballots in line with their state outcomes.

Either candidate needs to secure 270 Electoral College votes to claim victory. Electors are allocated to states based on their population, and most states give all of their electors to whichever candidate wins the state in the general vote.

But the winner-take-all model is not used in Nebraska and Maine, which instead allocate their votes proportionally based on their final outcomes.

Election Day -- including presidential and congressional elections -- is set for Nov. 5. But over 68 million people have already cast early ballots, according to the University of Florida's Election Lab.

About 1 million more Democrats than Republicans -- 13,015,856 to 12,135,666 -- have voted early either in-person at polling stations, or via mail.