On election eve in the United States, the presidential race is deadlocked.

The polls are exceptionally close across the country and in all the swing states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin in the industrial midwest; Nevada and Arizona in the west; and Georgia and North Carolina in the south.

The final New York Times/Siena poll shows Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris leading by a very small margin or tied with Republican former president Donald Trump in all the swing states.

The exception is Arizona, where Trump leads by a few percentage points.

Although there is no clear favourite to win, there are several critical factors that will driving voters’ decisions on election day. This is what to watch.

Trump’s favourability is stuck around 43 per cent in nationwide polling.

In the past two presidential elections, he fell short of taking 50 per cent of the national popular vote.

As president, he never achieved over 50 per cent favourability. And he has never topped 50 per cent since leaving office.

This means he has hit a ceiling in his support and is highly unlikely to win the national popular vote on Tuesday.

This also reflects what happened to Trump in the Republican primaries to win the nomination.

He dominated the field, defeating Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and several others.

But in most of those primaries, 15 to 20 per cent of Republican voters did not vote for Trump.

Where will these Republican voters ultimately land on Tuesday?

Probably half want to vote Republican and will go with Trump.

Others will not being able to bring themselves to vote for Harris and will simply not vote for president.

Others will switch their support to Harris.

Indeed, there has never been such a swelling of support from members of one party to support the other party’s presidential candidate.

Harris needs those “Republicans for Harris” votes.

In addition, she’ll need to replicate the coalition of young voters, voters of colour and women who backed current President Joe Biden against Trump in 2020 in those........

© The New Daily