The vice president’s paid-media campaign, along with her allies’, has been laser-focused on two themes: positioning Harris as a middle-class champion (and Trump as out for himself and other rich people), and protecting abortion rights. That is helping Harris close the gap with Trump on handling voters’ No. 1 issue: the economy. And abortion rights and Trump’s history of misogynistic statements is fueling a historic gender gap.

The Harris campaign is also far superior to Trump’s in campaign mechanics. Harris and her allies have had an advantage on the airwaves overall, though Trump closed the gap in the final few weeks. But what could really help Harris is the Trump campaign’s decision to outsource its ground game to groups run by media personalities and eccentric billionaires, largely out of financial necessity due to sluggish small donations and profligate spending on legal bills.

Harris probably won’t win Iowa like a shocking, election-eve Des Moines Register poll suggested. But the survey is a sign that she is stronger than it appears in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where Democrats’ gubernatorial candidates all won decisively two years ago — thanks to durable support among seniors and white voters, both of whom are overrepresented in the Rust Belt. And those states alone, combined with the electoral vote from the Iowa-bordering Omaha, Nebraska, congressional district, would be enough to deliver her an Electoral College majority.

The issues

From the moment she entered the race, Harris and her allies set out to brand Trump as only in it for himself and his rich friends. The vast majority of ads run in the closing weeks by Future Forward, the top-spending super PAC, hit this theme hard, running videos of Trump telling big donors, “You’re rich as hell ... and we’re gonna give you tax cuts.”

That campaign allowed Harris to close the gap on which candidate would do a better job handling the economy to 6 points, according to the final New York Times/Siena College poll.

That doesn’t mean she’s going to win voters for whom the economy is most important. But she doesn’t need to, because Biden didn’t four years ago. Of the 27 percent of 2020 voters who picked the economy and jobs as their most important issue, Trump won them over Joe Biden, 80 percent to 19 percent, according to AP Votecast.

Her strongest issue is abortion. Harris enters the election with a 16-point lead on abortion — and an even more commanding advantage among voters for whom it is their most important issue. Post Dobbs, abortion has been a galvanizing issue for more than two years in battleground-state races, even if the voters who delivered Republicans the House majority in 2022 in blue-state districts in California and New York mostly shrugged it off.

And Trump’s unwillingness to concede after his 2020 defeat, culminating with Jan. 6, looms large for many voters, including some who supported him in previous elections. While it wasn’t a staple of Harris’ paid-media campaign, ending the race with the unmistakable symbolism of a speech on the Ellipse reinforced that message for those voters uneasy with Trump’s conduct four years ago.

The coalitions

When Trump won in 2016, he dismantled the Obama-era link between non-college white voters and voters of color. Four years later, Biden clawed back just enough working-class whites to flip the script.

But Harris’ coalition is different. Trump’s gains with voters of color look real. That has required Harris to dip into traditionally Republican voter pools, like whites and older voters.

This was apparent before the Iowa poll: The legendary Ron Brownstein, currently a senior analyst for CNN, has been pointing out Harris’ (and Biden’s before her) perhaps-surprisingly durable numbers with white voters.

But Harris’ 19-point lead with seniors in the Iowa poll — and 2-to-1 advantage with women over 65 in Iowa — is a sign of her remarkable strength among a traditionally Republican voting bloc and a signal of the yawning gender gap. And Harris’ persistent appeals to Republican-leaning voters — campaigning with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), for example — are intended to reinforce that message.

The map

If months of handicapping are right, the election will come down to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that’s Harris’ most likely path to victory — one that wouldn’t require her even to wait for Arizona and Nevada to tally their late ballots.

As with Biden earlier this year, polling has showed Harris’ strength with white voters, especially those in northern states. That’s why, even as national polls shows a tie on the eve of the election, her path has remained clear, if difficult.

Thanks to a slight improvement over 2020 among Black voters, Trump will likely chip away a little in those states’ big cities — Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee — but Harris’ bet is that it won’t be enough. The three states have moved in tandem in every election since 1992, and Harris’ cleanest path to victory is if they do again this year.