Vice President Kamala Harris has a 4-point lead among likely voters nationally over former President Donald Trump on the eve of the 2024 presidential election, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. Harris has the support of 51 percent of likely voters to Trump's 47 percent — a lead just outside the poll's 3.5-point margin of error.

Just over half of independents support the Republican candidate, a 5-point lead over Harris.

“It was and remains a close election,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “As far as the popular vote goes, it’s up to her to lose.”

The 2024 election campaign was marked by dramatic events like no other election year in modern American history: the incumbent president and presumptive Democratic nominee withdrew from the race less than four months before Election Day; the first woman of color to be nominated as a major party candidate; two assassination attempts on the Republican candidate; and the same candidate was convicted of 34 felonies.

Despite all this, the likely voters surveyed in this poll closely resemble the 2020 electorate, which supported President Joe Biden with 51 percent of the popular vote to Trump's 47 percent.

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“We went through all of this to get back to where you ended up four years ago,” Miringoff said. “We’ll see if the Electoral College reflects that.”

Behind the top numbers, Miringoff noted some peripheral shifts that explain what coalitions are lining up behind the two candidates and why the polls continue to show a close race.

Most notably, the gender gap halved in the last month of the campaign.

Trump has maintained his lead among men, but has shrunk to 4 points, compared to the 16-point lead he had over Harris in October. At the same time, in the latest poll, 55 percent of women say they will support Harris. The vice president's lead among women has shrunk from 18 to 11 points since last month.

According to AP VoteCast polls of voters, the gender split in this poll is nearly identical to that between Biden and Trump in 2020.

Graphics by Jenna Cohen/PBS News

When it comes to race, however, recent polling shows support for the two candidates has shifted slightly since the last presidential election.

Trump leads Harris 54 percent to 45 percent among white voters, but her 9-point gap is a slight improvement from the 12-point lead Trump had with that group in 2020.

Instead, Harris saw some erosion among Black and Latino voters, who together accounted for about 20 percent of the vote in 2020. Harris is supported by 83 percent of likely black voters and 61 percent of likely Latino voters — a drop of 8 and 2 points, respectively, from the stock that supported Biden in 2020.

In her closing argument to voters in recent weeks, the vice president stressed that she wanted to reach out to Republican voters disillusioned with Trump and tried to remind them of the chaos that he said accompanied his time in the White House. Harris has campaigned in swing states with prominent Republican officials who have endorsed her, including former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kingzinger. The PBS News/NPR/Marist poll suggests their efforts may be working.

Eight percent of Republicans say they will vote for Harris. That's three percent more than a month ago and twice as many Democrats who say they will support Trump.

“In a close race, that’s potentially a big deal,” Miringoff said.

According to the University of Florida Election Lab, more than 78 million ballots have already been cast. Fifty-five percent of likely voters in this poll say they have already voted. A third of voters say they plan to vote in person on Election Day, including 40 percent of Trump supporters.

Among those who have already voted, Harris leads Trump 56 percent to 42 percent. But since voters have not yet cast their ballots, 53 percent plan to vote for Trump; while 45 percent support Harris.

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Polls released in the final hours of the presidential election often receive outsized attention — including a Des Moines Register poll over the weekend that showed Harris with a three-point lead over Trump in Iowa, and a trio of Marist polls late last year Week Harris led Trump in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But both Democrats and Republicans are quick to point out that what matters is the results after voting ends on Tuesday.

Miringoff offers a similar warning to poll-obsessed political observers.

“If you want to know who’s going to win and who’s going to win each state, this won’t tell you anything. It just shows you that she has the advantage,” Miringoff said. “The polls have continued to monitor how polarized the nation is.”

Preserving democracy and inflation are voters' biggest concerns

One of the biggest divides between likely Trump voters and likely Harri voters is the reasons for their participation in the elections and their perception of what will happen after the vote.

A majority of Harris supporters (51 percent) say their top concern when deciding who to vote for is preserving democracy. More than a third listed abortion as their second most important issue.

For Trump supporters, inflation and immigration are the biggest problems.

Acceptance of the election results

After voting ends and a winner is determined, 71 percent of likely voters say that if their chosen candidate is the loser, they should accept the results. 27 percent believe that the losing candidate in this scenario should challenge the results.

Trump has continued to spread baseless lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. At one of his final campaign rallies on Sunday in Pennsylvania, he told the audience that he “shouldn't have left” the White House after his loss to Biden. He has also begun laying the groundwork to challenge the 2024 election results if he loses.

43 percent of his supporters believe he should challenge the election results if he loses. Thirteen percent of Harris supporters say the same.

In preparation for Election Day, fences were erected around the White House and Capitol, and many commercial buildings in downtown Washington were boarded up in anticipation of possible violent demonstrations.

72 percent of likely voters are concerned about violence as a result of the election. This includes 85 percent of Harris supporters and 57 percent of Trump supporters.