Washington, Nov 5: More than 78 million American voters had already cast their ballot by Monday morning, on the eve of Election Day as Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump crisscrossed the seven battleground states with their closing remarks.

Harris and Trump are locked in a tight race even at this late stage in the campaign.

The Vice-President leads the former President by 0.9 percentage points in the weighted average of national polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight, at 47.9 per cent and 47 per cent.

Trump is ahead of Harris by 0.1 percentage point in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, at 48.5 per cent and 48.4 per cent. But the election is going to be determined not by national votes but by electoral college votes that the nominees secure, especially in the seven battleground states.

The seven battleground states -- they are so-called because they can go either way unlike solidly Democratic and Republican states -- are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.

The contest between Harris and Trump is tight even in these states.

Harris leads Trump in Michigan (47.9 per cent to 47.1 per cent), Wisconsin (48.2 per cent to 47.3 per cent) and is even with Trump in Pennsylvania (47.7 per cent to 47.9 per cent) and trails Trump in North Carolina (47.2 per cent to 48.4 per cent), Georgia (47.2 per cent to 48.4 per cent), Arizona (46.5 per cent to 49 per cent, and Nevada (47.3 per cent to 47.8 per cent.

But polls have been under serious doubt in recent years.

The 2020 national surveys for the presidential contest between Trump and Joe Biden, for instance, have been called the least accurate in 40 years, according to a comprehensive survey by the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

The report also found that polls for the state election were the least accurate in at least two decades.

The polls had got the 2016 contest between Trump and Clinton horribly wrong as well; because they failed to factor in the education divide and underestimated Trump.

No reason was cited in the report for the 2020 fiasco.

--IANS

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