Former President Donald Trump and the Vice President, Kamala Harris, are practically tied in voting intention ahead of next November’s elections, a poll by The New York Times and Siena College revealed on Thursday.

According to the survey, the Republican would lead with 48% support against the Democrat, who would get 47%, although the difference is so narrow that he would enter within the margin of statistical error, which is 3.4 percentage points.

Harris, the only candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, would thus improve the electoral prospects of the current president, Joe Biden, who resigned on Sunday to run for re-election due to internal criticism of his disastrous performance in the debate with Trump on June 27.

After that face-to-face, a Times and Siena poll revealed that Trump gave Biden a six-percentage-point advantage in voting intention, which made it practically impossible for the Democrat to raise the difference before November.

The new poll also shows that Harris would perform better than Biden among young voters and African-Americans, two sectors of the population disenchanted with the president’s management.

The survey was carried out between July 22 and 24 with a sample of 1,142 people.

CNN published on Wednesday another poll conducted by the SRS consultancy, according to which Trump has 49% support among registered voters from all over the country compared to 46% of Harris, also confirming that the race is tighter than when the Democratic candidate was Biden.

Harris has already secured the support of the delegates necessary to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention of August and his campaign has broken a collection record.

The Republican campaign predicts that Harris will have a “honeymoon” with polls and favorable media coverage for a couple of weeks, but then Trump will clearly lead the contest again.

The candidate for the Presidency of Venezuela’s main opposition coalition, Edmundo González Urrutia, said on Thursday, when the electoral campaign closes, that he is convinced of his “triumph” in Sunday’s elections, in which he will compete against President Nicolás Maduro and eight other candidates.

“We are convinced of our triumph (…) all the measures of opinion that we know give us a comfortable and broad victory, and not even that they make some triws until July 27 will be able to reach the gap, the gap that exists between our candidacy and the ruling party candidacy. It is not possible for them to take away that triumph from us,” González Urrutia said at a press conference.

He also expressed his confidence that the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) – which will deploy thousands of soldiers for a security and custody operation in the voting centers – “will remain attached” to the Constitution, which defines it as an institution “without political militancy” that is “at the exclusive service of the nation and in no case that of any political person or bias.”

For her part, the anti-chavista leader María Corina Machado, who supports the candidacy of the former ambassador, assured that “the regime (of Nicolás Maduro) has never been as weak as it is today,” since “they lost their entire social base.”

“We are here with open arms and open hearts because, in this transition process, we are all necessary to push this country (for) forward, and because fear was lost, the threat of violence, the threat of persecution no longer works,” he said.

According to Machado, “everyone knows that the next president is Edmundo González,” in whose government,” he said, “there will be no persecution.”

In this sense, he expressed the willingness of this opposition sector to begin “immediately” a negotiation “once Edmundo González’s victory takes place, to advance in a transition process” that, in his opinion, will be “ordered,” but also “complex and delicate.”

“We are confident that the regime itself will understand, Nicolás Maduro himself, that it is in his own interest to facilitate an orderly transition process,” Machado added.

The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, warned on Thursday that if the “political situation” of Venezuela “worsens” after this Sunday’s elections, they must be prepared, because the flow of migrants through the Darién, the border jungle with Colombia used as a migratory route, will increase “in a very short time.”

“We are three days away from the solution or the worsening of the political situation in Venezuela. I advocate a democratic solution that respects the will of the people. If that turns out to be the case, I feel that we will have an improvement in the condition, because Venezuela is 66% of migrants. That country contributes a significant share of people to the transit,” the president of Panama said at his weekly press conference.

And he explained: “If the situation (in Venezuela after the elections) improves, it can be deduced that much fewer people will want to venture into that risk of transit through that jungle (of the Darién). If the political situation worsens, in another scenario, let’s prepare because that (the migratory flow) will increase in a very short time.”

According to Mulino, this Sunday’s elections in the South American country “would already be one of the last chances (opportunities) of Venezuela to open up to a democratic and peaceful world (so that) the people (find the) solution that they consider most appropriate.”

Last Thursday – also at that press conference he plans to offer every week – the Panamanian president said that “well-conducted” elections in Venezuela will possibly reduce the flow of migration through the Darién jungle, since most of the passers-by who go through it are from that South American country.

Venezuela will have its elections on July 28, in which ten candidates will participate, including President Nicolás Maduro, who seeks his re-election, and the main leader of the opposition and the polls, Edmundo González Urrutia, instead of the disqualified María Corina Machado.

Panama is trying to reduce migration through that dangerous jungle and since Mulino’s arrival in power, several measures have been taken, such as the installation of “perimeter barriers” (barred fences) in some points of Darién to close unauthorized passages and “channel” the flow, in addition to the signing of an agreement with the United States to return migrants who cross that jungle by plane.

So far this year, more than 216,000 migrants have crossed the dangerous Darién jungle, most of them Venezuelans, who seek to reach the United States or Canada in search of better living conditions, while in all of 2023 there were more than 520,000, an unprecedented figure, according to official data from Panama.