WASHINGTON — With Election Day on Tuesday, NBC News' final nationwide poll claims the 2024 presidential campaign is "neck and neck."
Both Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are getting support from 49% of registered voters, according to the poll.
Harris and Trump are making their final campaign push with a focus on seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
"For both of the campaigns, they're mobilizing their bases in very different ways," said David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University.
While Vice President Harris is putting a lot of her efforts into a get-out-the-vote strategy, Schultz said former President Trump's approach is "perhaps through the campaign rallies that Trump is doing. But also going the litigation strategy in laying the groundwork, potentially, to challenge the results."
Both Trump and Harris are targeting voters under the age of 30.
"The way I see the election right now is that if Harris can mobilize female voters, and especially younger female voters under the age of 30, she wins the election. If she can't mobilize them, Trump wins. Trump, on the other hand, needs to have his base and needs to make sure that those younger, male voters at the very least don't go over and vote for Harris," Schultz said.
A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows Harris leading Trump "47% to 44% among likely voters" — a state Trump won in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
"Iowa is really interesting. Iowa up until a few years ago, let's say two or three election cycles ago, was one of the swing states. It was a state that was a pretty good predictor in terms of the election and it has fallen into the Republican camp fairly reliably in the last few election cycles at the presidential level. But if the Iowa poll is accurate... what we're now seeing is that Harris has a several point lead, or at least let's say this way, even with the margin of error in the polling is competitive in that state," Schultz said. "This again is suggesting, if we look at the polling results there, that female voters are heavily mobilized and are heavily coming out to vote."
Meanwhile, polls suggest a tough fight in Wisconsin.
"This is consistent with what we saw both in 2016 and in 2020 where the margins of victory in Wisconsin were just a few ten thousands of votes or something. And all indications are we're going to see the exact same thing also in Wisconsin this week," Schultz said.
As part of a final push for votes, on Monday both vice presidential candidates will be back in Wisconsin. Democrat Tim Walz will be in La Crosse, Stevens Point and Milwaukee. Meanwhile, it's reported that Republican JD Vance will also be speaking in La Crosse.
Before heading to battleground states, Tim and Gwen Walz are planning to join a meet-and-greet with supporters in Minnesota on Monday morning.
While there are many polls out there, Schultz said, "One of my theories going into the closing days of the election is that the polls may not be adequately capturing the depth of mobilization among female voters, and they may not be well capturing the mobilization or interest that younger voters have. Younger voters are notoriously hard to poll."
Even though there's been a lot of focus on battleground states, Schultz said people should not ignore Omaha.
"Nebraska is one of the two states in the country that does not award electoral votes on a winner-take-all. They do it proportionally. If Harris were to win all the safe Democratic states, plus win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. If she also wins Omaha, as she's favored to do so, she would have exactly 270 electoral votes. Just enough to win the presidency," Schultz said.
With what's expected to be a close race, Schultz said it's unlikely a winner will be declared on Tuesday night.
"It's unlikely. Not impossible, unlikely, we're going to know the results on Election Night," Schultz said.
