TRUMP COULD BE HEADING BACK TO WHITE HOUSE

Less than a fortnight before the election, Donald Trump seems to be inching ahead in his race against Kamala Harris. It has left politicos and pundits hedging their bets

- MK BHADRAKUMAR

A common refrain is that the race in the US presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is a 'toss-up', that it hangs on a 'knife's edge', and could 'go either way'. All that is true, insofar as both candidates still have possible paths to 270 electoral college votes out of the total 538 distributed among the states. That said, there's good reason to anticipate the unthinkable that Trump might be on track for a landslide electoral college victory and a national mandate.

Trump has managed to stem the tide of the race in his favour. His ratings are growing, although not yet significantly ahead of Harris's. He is strengthening his position in both the key states and nationally. This trend has steadily accrued through the past six weeks or so, and seems sustainable in the 10-day period ahead for the poll on November 5.

On the other hand, for two weeks in a row, while Trump's ratings have kept up a strong momentum, Harris's began losing ground both nationally and in key states. The rating aggregator RealClearPolitics still gives Harris an advantage of 1.3 points (as against 2.2 percentage points a week earlier), but that is a shaky lead within the margin of error.

Remember, at this point in the presidential race in 2000, Joe Biden was ahead of Trump by 8.9 percentage points.