The election is just 21 short days away and, according to multiple bipartisan polls, it remains a historically tight race: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are neck-in-neck, most notably in key swing states, including Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, according to a The New York Times / Siena College polls published Oct 15. “There has never been an election with so many polls showing such a close race,” reports The New York Times.
Now, remember — the popular vote doesn’t guarantee a Harris win. The Electoral College determines elections, and they’re made up of electors appointed by their state’s political party. Each state gets a set number of electoral votes, and while they promise to vote in their party’s favor, they technically don’t have to. It could come down to just a handful of states who will decide the fate of reproductive health, climate change, the economy, and even democracy itself. (As a reminder, here’s where both candidates stand on key election issues.)
The pressure is on. A candidate must win a simple majority of 270 electoral votes to be elected, and right now, both candidates are currently likely to win 200 electoral votes each. These battleground states are essential and they could very well determine who gets to 270 and therefore becomes President of the United States. Swing states are called that because the electoral outcome could literally swing either way — towards Democrat or Republican — and we won’t know until the ballots are all cast and accounted for.
Nationally, Harris is currently polling ahead of Trump by three percentage points according to the Harvard/CAPS Harris poll released on Oct 14, but Trump currently leads with battleground state voters. These are small margins, and at the moment, both candidates are essentially tied: Harris currently leads Pennsylvania by four percentage points and Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by one percentage point. Trump leads Arizona by six percentage points, North Carolina and Georgia by one percentage point, and Arizona by two percentage points.
Polls aren’t the end-all-be-all of elections, and results will change between now and Election Day. They’re useful for a temperature check, but they don’t always accurately predict what’s going to happen in an election. Voters can gain some insight into who’s popular or not, and campaigns can use the info to determine which swing states and specific areas to target. Even so, no matter what the polls say, make sure you get out and vote. — Elizabeth Gulino
With only a month before the 2024 election, Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for President, is on quite the media tour as she talks to voters on a range of platforms. In line with a longstanding tradition, Harris recently appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” for a hard-hitting conversation that tackled immigration, economic policy, foreign policy, and bipartisanship. The day before that conversation, Harris had another equally rigorous conversation with host Alex Cooper on her popular Call Her Daddy podcast where she discussed sexual violence, abortion access, and attacking student and medical debt.
Call Her Daddy is Spotify’s second most-listened-to podcast, and number one when it comes to women listeners (most popular among Gen Z and millennial women with nearly 8 in 10 of the show’s listeners being under 35, according to Edison Research). Harris was able to dig deeper than she has in weeks about the fears, hopes, and concerns women uniquely face. It was a refreshing conversation, but the content of the interview was somewhat eclipsed by the controversy over whether Harris should have joined the podcast at all.
It’s clear that the 2024 election is a choice between two opposing visions of America: Donald Trump, a convicted felon who openly admires autocrats, seeks to divide through fear and hate; Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and South Asian woman, stresses the need for empathy in politics. These two potential futures balance on the edge of a knife: With only a month until Election Day, the two candidates remain deadlocked in the polls.
Election anxiety makes it hard to think past November 5. Regardless of who wins the election, however, communities across the country will be hard at work, fighting to stabilize an eroded democracy. We’ll need a plan to move forward. And to do that, we need to know how each candidate plans to address major issues, including abortion access, immigration, the cost of living, the climate crisis, and the crisis in Gaza. As you come up with a voting plan, get to know where each candidate stands on the major issues.
A few months ago, I was feeling especially hopeless about the election. But in July, something miraculous happened: Joe Biden dropped out of the race. His replacement was Vice President Kamala Harris, a Black and South Asian woman whose very embodiment defies Donald Trump’s white hegemonic vision of America. My reaction — a clenched knot loosening in my stomach — was immediate and visceral. It felt like hope. Hope that our collective future might actually get better come November. The feeling was shared by millions: Harris broke donation records in just 24 hours. Megan Thee Stallion performed at her first presidential rally, and Hotties for Harris was born. As one woman told Refinery29 in our survey about the election, “Before I was apathetic and resigned to a probable Trump presidency, now I feel hopeful that change can happen if we speak out and stand together.”
The 2024 presidential election has been a bumpy ride with unexpected twists and turns. Between balancing a desire for radical change with our enduring skepticism of institutions that have consistently failed us, we’re exhausted — but with so many of our basic freedoms on the chopping block, apathy is not an option.At the same time, there’s a feeling of hope in the air.
How can we engage this energy to recognize the seismic implications of potentially having the first female, and Black and South Asian president, as well as the issues at stake, from reproductive rights, racial justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, and immigration to income inequality, climate change, and more? Whether it’s your first election or your 15th, you need a familiar place to learn and consider — but also to laugh, relate, and release.
Donald Trump’s Vice-Presidential nominee, JD Vance, made his first major showing for the campaign at the U.S. VP debate last night. It was unlike anything I expected. The topic of abortion access came up and Vance took a stance that sounded much closer to a Democratic one. “There’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options,” he said. Vance was asked about Project 2025’s assertion of abortion surveillance and federal monitoring of pregnancies and miscarriages – in part, for the purpose of enforcing conservative policy.
He quickly denied that he or Trump would support such a policy and pivoted, “I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word.” I was as stunned as Democratic nominee for Vice President, Tim Walz. “I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what’s happening,” Walz admitted earnestly. “His running mate, though, does not. And that’s the problem.” Despite the cordial rapport between the two candidates, make no mistake: JD Vance is just as — if not more — dangerous than Donald Trump.
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