Is Kamala Harris or Donald Trump leading the US presidential race?

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The important stories about money and politics in the race for the White House

After $2.8 billion spent on the campaign trail, two assassinations, a president's withdrawal from re-election, two consequential debates and endorsements from everyone from Taylor Swift to Hulk Hogan, Americans are still divided over who their next leader should be.

With just a week remaining in the most turbulent race for the White House in modern political history, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump appear deadlocked – evidence of either a fundamental break in US politics or a colossal error by the pollsters will only be known after the end of voting in November 5.

Here's what you should know about the race in its final stage.

What do the polls say?

According to Financial Times polls, Harris has a slim 1 percentage point lead nationally over Trump. But national polls are by no means decisive in the presidential election, since the winner is determined by the Electoral College. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won far more votes nationwide than Trump, but he won more of the crucial swing states and thus the White House.

In these crucial battlegrounds, the race is close. Small gains in recent polls have Trump narrowly ahead in six of the seven states, but four of them are within half a percentage point, well within the margin of error.

The biggest gain is Pennsylvania, the most populous of the swing states, where the most Electoral College votes are at stake. Both parties have registered and motivated voters there in recent months, spending a total of $388 million on advertising.

But here, too, it's on a knife's edge, and whichever candidate wins, Pennsylvania would have about a 90 percent chance of winning the presidency, according to predictive models.

Not surprisingly, poll-based models view the race itself as a coin toss. Three prominent forecasters – FiveThirtyEight, The Economist and Silver Bulletin – all list Trump as a 53 percent favorite. New popular prediction markets favor Trump by about 60 percent, but these markets were influenced by a tiny number of outsized traders, according to data analyzed by the FT.

How does the race compare to 2016 and 2020?

In 2016 and 2020, Trump was well behind his opponents Clinton and Joe Biden before Election Day, but in both cases he outperformed national polls. This year his gap is significantly smaller.

The Harris campaign is still optimistic that it can pull off a victory if it doesn't underestimate Trump's appeal and campaign in all the key battleground states. For example, Clinton barely campaigned in Wisconsin and narrowly lost the state.

Harris also hopes that pollsters who underestimated Republican support will now overestimate it, as they did in the 2022 midterm elections when Democrats overperformed in the polls.

This was seen as a response to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down abortion rights and concerns about extremist pro-Trump Republican candidates. It's a theme that Harris is pushing forward again this time.

The vice president is taking a different approach than Clinton and Biden, with a clear appeal to the political center.

She did not, like Clinton, emphasize her historic potential to become the first female president and commander in chief. It does not propose any new major government spending programs on the scale proposed by Biden. She has also taken a tougher stance on immigration, trying to neutralize one of Trump's lines of attack.

Who is ahead on the most important issue for voters?

The prominent issue in the campaign was the economy, particularly inflation and the high cost of living, which were consistently cited by voters in the FT-Michigan Ross poll last year.

In the last poll, conducted in mid-October, Trump regained a narrow lead over Harris when asked which candidate voters had more confidence in handling the economy: the Republican got 44 percent and the Democratic vice president got 43 percent .

What does early voting mean?

More than 40 million Americans — likely about a quarter of all voters — have already cast their votes through mail-in and early voting programs. This is well below the pandemic-hit 2020 election, but on track to surpass 2016.

In states that provide data, 40 percent of early votes were cast by registered Democrats and 36 percent by registered Republicans. But election experts warn that such early breakdowns are indicative of the final result.

Who spends more?

The race will be the most expensive presidential election in history, according to an FT analysis of financial records. A total of $3.8 billion had been raised by mid-October.

Democrats, including pro-Biden and Harris groups, have raised more — $2.2 billion versus $1.8 billion for pro-Trump groups since the start of last year. Democrats also experienced a record wave of support from small donors, particularly after Harris replaced Biden on the ballot over the summer. Billionaires accounted for more than a third of the money donated to Trump groups, with just four people donating $432 million.

Harris also spent more on advertising and in every swing state. These ads will continue to cover battleground states in the remaining days as the candidates make their closing arguments.

As of mid-October, Harris had $261 million in cash and Trump groups had $241 million. Both are still in the process of fundraising, so they still have plenty of firepower at their disposal over the last seven days.

Additional reporting by Sam Learner in New York