The Battle For Wisconsin: A Key State In The 2024 Election Showdown

The battle for Wisconsin is caught in a dead heat between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in the final days of the 2024 election. The Badger State is set to be among a handful of states that could tip the results of the presidential election. Harris held a slight lead in the key swing state shortly after she entered the presidential race, but the gap with Trump has closed as November 5 inches closer.

President Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020, flipping the state that sided with Trump during his first presidential run in 2016. But Trump lost the state by just 0.63 percentage points, or around 20,000 votes. Four years prior, Trump beat then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by just 0.7 percentage points.

According to FiveThirtyEight, as of Wednesday, the vice president is leading her Republican opponent by 0.4 points on average across statewide polls, and several recent surveys have found that the candidates are tied in Wisconsin. In a poll released by Quinnipiac University on Wednesday, Harris and Trump were locked at 48 percent apiece, based on the responses of 1,108 likely voters.

A poll by Morning Consult and Bloomberg garnered the same results, with Trump and Harris tied at 48 percent among 624 likely voters. A survey by the Trafalgar Group, a conservative pollster, from October 18 to October 20, also found Harris and Trump locked at 46.8 percent each among 1,083 likely voters in Wisconsin.

Harris was given a small lead in a poll by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, in partnership with The Telegraph, that was released Monday, with the vice president ahead 47 percent to 46 percent among 730 eligible Wisconsin voters surveyed from October 16 to October 18. The results, however, fall within the poll's margin of error of 3.63 percent.

Trump was found ahead by 1 point (50 percent to 49 percent) in a poll released last week by Napolitan News. But given the poll's margin of error of 3.5 percent, the results are considered a toss-up.

Both campaigns have prioritized stops in Wisconsin in the final weeks of the election. Harris stopped in three different cities on Thursday in an effort to motivate voters before the state's first day of early voting on Tuesday.

Former President Barack Obama later hosted a "get out the vote" event in Madison on the day polls opened alongside Harris' running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, during which the duo highlighted the closeness of the race.

"When the stakes are the highest, winners are the ones who step up, and that's exactly what we're going to do," Walz said during the event at the Alliant Energy Center.

Trump made four stops in Wisconsin in an eight-day span at the start of the month. The former president took a different tone than his Democratic opponents, and spoke confidently about his chances come November.

They say that Wisconsin is probably the toughest of the swing states to win. Trump, however, confidently dismissed this notion during an event in Juneau on October 6, stating, "I don't think so."

State election officials said that over 97,000 people cast absentee ballots in person on the first day of early voting this week in Wisconsin, a jump from the nearly 80,000 who cast ballots on the opening day of voting in 2020.

As of Wednesday, 475,460 absentee ballots had been returned. There are over 3.5 million voters registered in Wisconsin, but registration is open through Election Day.