NPR's final pre-election poll reiterates how tight this race is

No one knows how this presidential election is going to go.

Polls have indicated that it will likely be close. All leads have been within the margin of error in all seven states and nationally.

The final national NPR/PBS News/Marist poll before voting ends in this election found Harris ahead with likely voters, 51% to 47%. Joe Biden in 2020 had a larger final lead in the polling averages, but he, too, was at about 51%.

Among registered voters, the NPR poll was a dead heat, 49%-49%. That Harris is ahead with likely voters reflects, in part, her leads with white, college-educated voters and Baby Boomers, both of which are high-propensity voter groups.

Harris also was doing well with Black voters and not far off from where she needed to be with Latinos — 83% of Black voters said they were voting for Harris, while 61% of Latinos did, too. The 61% with Latinos is slightly below where Democrats have been with the group in the past, but national polls have high margins of error with subgroups.

Harris was also lower than where she needed to be with young voters. She was winning 56% of Gen Z voters in the survey. In the past quarter century, Democrats have won with 60% of voters 18-29 (Biden, Obama) and lost when they were below that (Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton).

But Harris hopes that the movement toward her with white, college-educated voters and older voters can offset potential losses with younger voters.

Trump, on the other hand, did best with those who identified as white, evangelical voters, white voters without college degrees and rural voters. There is significant overlap between those three groups — and Trump needs to run up the score in rural areas and hope to peel off some Latinos to win.

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