right now our political director and Washington bureau chief reclin is here with the latest polling in what has been a tight race from the very beginning Rick yeah good morning Robin a tight and relatively stable race our latest poll with ipso shows a three-point lead for kamla Harris over Donald Trump and if that looks familiar this is what our first poll back in August when K Harris first got in the race looked like an identical three-point race nothing has seemed to shake this campaign but zooming in on the Battleground States our 538 polling average tells
a little bit of a different story Harris with the slightest of leads in Michigan and Wisconsin up by a single point in the polling averages Trump up very narrowly inside a percentage Point North Carolina Georgia Nevada a little bit more in Arizona but all of this well within a margin of error Pennsylvania just about a tie 2/10 of a percentage Point separate the candidates and what's basically the must-win state for both candidates so walk us through Rick what each candidate needs to do to win yeah so this is our our what if scenarios uh we're
assuming that the blue States say blue and the red States say red the easiest way for Harris to to to capture the presidency she takes Michigan Wisconsin and then Pennsylvania that's 270 electoral votes exactly that's exactly the number that she would need on the other hand Donald Trump has some PS that run through the Sun Belt if he's able to end up winning in Nevada and Arizona out west then he can just hold Georgia and North Carolina in the South he puts puts him just one state away the biggest target again Pennsylvania that's the one
that is most likely to determine the president presidency and and Rick what do we expect in terms of how States will report the results yeah Michael some 82 million Americans have already voted early that's a wild number and it's roughly half the the total expected vote of the day and all those votes are going to take a really long time to count every state does it a little bit differently Georgia and North Carolina the officials there tell us most of the votes going to be in quickly polls in those CL in those States close early
we could have winners in both before midnight unless it's very close Michigan they've changed their law there to speed up the process that could roll in tonight as well most of the votes should be counted in Wisconsin by the we hours of the morning but if the election comes down to Nevada or Arizona officials tell us counting all those mail ballots will take days if not a week or more and it's very plausible back to Pennsylvania the state we're waiting to clinch on right there officials there weren't allowed to even open the 1.7 million early
votes until this morning big urban areas like Philadelphia said they're going to count all through the night and it will be a very late one at that guys
