Women's vote holds the power: Harris vs. Trump showdown

Few experts and observers dare to name a favorite two days before the election with any degree of certainty. This also applies to those who create pre-election polls. "Surveys indicate a very close race. If they were off by as much as they were four or eight years ago, Trump would achieve a decisive victory because Kamala Harris' poll advantage is smaller than Joe Biden's and Hillary Clinton's," said Prof. Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in Virginia.

In a poll conducted by his school in collaboration with the "Washington Post," Harris had a one-point lead among voters in seven key states and was winning with a slight lead in four of them. "Pollsters say they have fixed the errors of underestimating Trump. Some even fear that this time they might overestimate his support. But it's very hard to verify, and we'll only know when we see the election results," he added.

According to Rozell, despite this, Harris has a slight advantage in the "Rust Belt" states like Michigan and Wisconsin, and Trump has the edge in southern and southwestern states like North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. If these were the results, the outcome in Pennsylvania, the largest state with the most evenly divided support for both candidates, would decide the winner.

According to the political scientist, the key to Trump's victory will be to mitigate Harris' advantage among women, who make up a larger part of the electorate. Harris, on the other hand, must attract white voters—especially white men—among whom Trump has an advantage. He also notes that one of the main dividing lines, where differences in political sympathies grow with each election, is the level of education. Harris has a decisive advantage among those with higher education but loses among voters without a diploma.

Rozell believes that this year, the factor that could surprise observers might be Harris' "shy female voters." These are women in conservative communities and families who are afraid to publicly admit to voting for Democrats but will choose Harris at the ballot box, driven by fears of restricting abortion rights.

In the current campaign—the first presidential campaign after the Supreme Court's decision, which with Trump's appointees' votes overturned the federal right to abortion—Democrats are openly trying to encourage the wives of conservative husbands to vote, emphasizing that their vote is secret. "You can vote any way you want, and no one will know," says the voiceover in an election ad featuring actress Julia Roberts.

Rozell notes that this is a real phenomenon that could impact the elections. "A few years ago, when I was gathering material for a book about the religious right movement, there were many instances when, during interviews with women, they would ask me to turn off the recorder and only then honestly spoke about what they thought about abortion and restrictions in this matter," Rozell recounts.

However, the political scientist claims that decisive events could turn out to be those of the last days of the campaign, such as Trump's insulting of Puerto Ricans during a rally in New York, his comments about putting Liz Cheney (a main Republican politician supporting Harris) at gunpoint, or Joe Biden's slip, where, according to Republicans, he called Trump voters "trash" (Biden explains that he referred to a comedian who insulted Puerto Ricans as trash).

Dr. Nicholas Higgins, a political scientist from North Greenville University in South Carolina, paints a slightly different picture of the situation. In his view, Harris could surprise observers by winning in North Carolina, where a Democratic candidate has only won once in nearly 50 years (Barack Obama in 2008). Trump, on the other hand, could surprise by winning in Pennsylvania. "As for North Carolina, I see favorable trends for her in early voting. For example, in one of the counties near me, Buncombe, where Democrats usually make up 50% of the voters, early voting has already achieved 66% turnout, higher than for Republicans. Meanwhile, these are areas most affected by recent flooding from Hurricane Helene, where less motivated voters, who favor Trump, may have more urgent things to do than vote," said Higgins.

As he added, although positive signs for Harris are also visible in Pennsylvania polls at the individual county level, the factor that, in the face of a close race, could tip the victory in Trump's favor might be Elon Musk's actions. The billionaire organized a lottery, giving away a million dollars daily to voters in key states who signed his political petition for freedom of speech and the right to bear arms.

Not delving into whether this process is legal, it's quite a genius move. Trump's campaign has thus gained data on millions of supportive voters. This way, on election day, they will know who among them voted and who needs additional motivation," Higgins says.

According to this scenario, with Harris winning in Wisconsin and Michigan, and Trump winning in Georgia and Arizona, the outcome would be decided by the result in Nevada, a state with a unique specificity where the result is particularly hard to predict.

"A large portion of voters there consists of entertainment and hospitality industry workers in Las Vegas—an industry with particularly high personnel turnover, making it difficult for pollsters to capture this electorate. These are also people guided by somewhat different priorities than the rest of the country," analyzes the political scientist.

Higgins admits, however, that he is not sure if his theses will be confirmed. "My degree of certainty is close to zero. I wouldn't bet a cent on my predictions. But if I were forced, I would point to a Trump victory," he concluded.