This election is about the big and the small – as small as anything can be in the USA.
The big number first – our Sky News poll tracker now gives Kamala Harris a three-point lead over Donald Trump nationwide.
That number has been getting bigger – it looks like we can now see a bounce from last week’s debate, one that is being sustained.
And it could get bigger still: bear in mind that our poll tracker includes polls conducted pre-debate.
As they are replaced in our tracker by new polls, her lead may improve.
Three points are substantial: for context, a week after the Biden-Trump debate, widely seen as a disaster for Biden, Trump was polling 3.3 points higher than Biden – a similar gap.
So why aren’t we talking about Trump being in as much trouble?
Some of that has to do with the narrative and momentum around Biden at the time, especially the idea that things would only get worse.
But Trump also has some strengths that Biden did not.
First, as we talked about earlier this week, Harris needs a big nationwide polling lead to ensure she wins a small number of swing states.
Three points are no guarantee of that.
And that’s the other point about the small.
This is about specific voters in specific places, with different demographics and economies.
There are three geographic groupings for the swing states – the southeast (Georgia and North Carolina), the northeast (Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin), and the southwest (Nevada and Arizona).
Ipsos has done polling around the issues that voters in those three regions think are the most important, though.
They’re strikingly similar, enough to aggregate them together.
Democracy means “threats to democracy and the dangers of extreme polarisation” and the economy will mean different things in the rust belt northeast vs the agricultural southeast.
But there are clear priorities.
And those swing state voters have clear ideas about which candidate can best deal with those issues.
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There are some local variations though.
The southwest rates Trump even higher on the economy and immigration, and the southeast thinks he would be better for democracy.
That’s the good news for Donald Trump.
In the smaller places where the votes really matter, he’s seen as the best candidate on the issues that really matter.
But let’s finish with another big-picture finding: Harris’s net favourability continues to be way ahead of Trump’s.
So, big vs small: how they interact will decide the election.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
