While polls suggest that one of the closest presidential races in history is taking place between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the USA is on edge.

Major polls show the candidates are nearly deadlocked.

In battleground states on the eve of the election, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight reported a 47.8 percent tie in Pennsylvania, nearly identical numbers in Nevada and only one-point leads in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina.

But these razor-thin margins may not tell the whole story.

“I wonder if it’s really that close?” he asked W.Joseph CampbellProfessor at American University in Washington.

Their questions stem from pollsters’ troubled history in recent elections and potential overreaction to past failures.

The political establishment was caught off guard in 2016 when Trump won despite trailing in the polls; Joe Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 was much narrower than expected.

In 2022, Republicans hold only a slim majority in Congress despite predictions of a “red wave.”

“The 2020 presidential election was collectively the worst in four decades for pollsters and an embarrassment for many others,” Campbell said.

Trump’s emergence on the political scene largely explains these election accidents. Their supporters were consistently undercounted in 2016 and 2020, leading polling companies to adjust their methodologies.

‘Traumatic for pollsters’

History offers an interesting parallel: In 1980, polls showed incumbent Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan neck and neck. Reagan ultimately won by 10 points, benefiting from a late surge while Carter lost the support of a third-party candidate.

“I’m not saying this will be the model in 2024, but it’s something to keep in mind,” Campbell added.

Leading survey analysts have openly acknowledged these challenges.

“No, you can’t trust the polls… You can’t safely assume that the candidate leading in the polls will win,” wrote Nate Cohn, chief political analyst and polling director for the New York Times.

Cohn explained that pollsters are working to correct systemic biases that emerged during the Trump era.

“It’s hard to overstate how traumatic the 2016 and 2020 elections were for many pollsters. For some, another Trump snub could be a major threat to their jobs and livelihoods.”

But he warned that pollsters may now be underestimating Harris as they adjust methods to better capture Trump voters.

“On balance, these changes suggest caution.” Optimism about better accuracybut there are no guarantees,” Cohn concluded.

Some experts suspect pollsters may fall victim to groupthink, or “herding,” by adjusting results that deviate significantly from consensus.

Professors Joshua Clinton and John Lapinski warned NBC News: “State polls show not only a surprisingly tight race, but an unexpectedly tight race.”

They suggest that “a risk-averse pollster who gets a 5-point lead in what he thinks is a tied race may choose to ‘adjust’ the results to something closer to what other polls are showing so that outlier polls don’t negatively impact their reputation…”

They said this raises a very important question: “Will 2024 be as close as 2020 because our politics are stable, or will the 2024 polls just look like the 2020 results because of decisions made by state pollsters?”