Vice President Kamala Harris continues to check the boxes in her bid to become president. From the first rollout of her candidacy through the Democratic National Convention to her debate performance against former president Donald Trump, she has mostly met or exceeded expectations.

Yet to be confident of winning, she still has work to do.

In the first weeks after President Joe Biden ended his candidacy in mid-July and she seized the nomination, Harris moved the polls in her direction — two, three or four points in some of the seven most competitive states. A contest that had slipped away from Democrats suddenly became competitive.

That initial shift in the polls got Harris back to roughly even with Trump, and there the race has been ever since. In the past two weeks, according to The Post’s average of polls, there has been only marginal movement, less than a point each, in all the battlegrounds.

A flurry of polls dropped last week, most of them in the three northern states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that have been seen as Harris’s most direct path to victory. There was some variation, especially in Pennsylvania, the linchpin state in the election.

A Washington Post poll showed Pennsylvania statistically tied, with Harris at 48 percent and Trump at 47 percent among likely voters. A Quinnipiac University poll showed Harris at 51 and Trump at 45. A Marist College poll put it 49 percent each. When all the Pennsylvania polls are averaged together, and across four different poll averages, Harris has a one-to-two-point advantage in the state — not insignificant, but well within the margin of error in a state that was decided by a point or less in both 2016 and 2020.

That’s the pattern pretty much throughout the other battleground states. In Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris has a slight advantage. In four other states — North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada — the poll averages show the two candidates essentially tied, with Georgia leaning a slight bit more toward Trump but not comfortably.

What more can Harris do?

She was widely judged to have done better than Trump in the Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia, including among a group of voters who could help decide the election followed by The Post. She outperformed him substantively and stylistically. She made her points; he did not — and he veered off track repeatedly.

Some of the glow of Harris’s performance has begun to fade, according to one Democratic strategist closely monitoring the numbers. That’s not atypical. If Harris gains any advantage in the polls from what could be their only debate (she has accepted a CNN invitation for a second debate on Oct. 23; he has not), it will be tiny — though in this election, tiny is not nothing.

Harris has shown real improvement in public perceptions of her. Through most of Biden’s term in office, she suffered from weak ratings. Since Biden left the race, her favorability ratings have risen. Looking at the website fivethirtyeight.com, her favorable versus unfavorable numbers were 17 points net negative. Today they are even — as many have a favorable impression of her as an unfavorable one. Meanwhile, Trump’s image is net negative by nine points.

According to new Marist College polls, Harris’s favorability is net positive in Michigan to Trump’s net negative. In Wisconsin, she’s even and Trump is net negative. In Pennsylvania, both are marginally net negative.

Shouldn’t that count for something? Republican pollster Bill McInturff says not really, and he points to recent history as evidence. In 2016, Trump was significantly more negative in perceptions than was Hillary Clinton (though both were unpopular), and he won. In 2020, Biden’s favorability was about even while Trump’s was negative — and he still almost won.

“Among all the political rules broken in the Trump era, believing the candidate with the higher net positive rating is going to win has definitely been thrown out,” McInturff said in an exchange of text messages. McInturff acknowledged that it’s still preferable to have positive ratings, but explained that the shift for Harris has largely been among the Democratic base.

There are few truly undecided voters in this election. But there are persuadable voters — people who may already be leaning toward one candidate or another but who may not be certain to vote. One key to winning over and turning out those voters is to provide information they don’t already know about a candidate, pro or con, that helps them decide.

In Trump’s case, he is so well defined that providing something new is nearly impossible. Opinions and perceptions of him are fixed, on both sides of the equation. That’s why no matter how outrageous he acts, no matter how often he tells lies, his standing changes almost not at all. And no matter how much it’s written about or talked about in the media, there’s no real change.

For Harris, there is still information to be imparted, from who she is and where she came from to her positions on issues of importance to voters to the cues she sends about her strength as a possible president dealing with some intractable problems at home and a dangerous and unstable world.

Some of this she’s doing through advertising, whether on television or digitally. Some of it is through social media. Some of it she sought to do in the debate, which was watched by more than 67 million viewers. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is doing what it can to tarnish her image, to make her look out of the mainstream and not ready to confront foreign dictators.

Harris must continue to allay voters’ concerns about the record of the Biden-Harris administration, whether it’s the border and immigration, the cost of everyday goods or the state of the world. Inflation has come down and the Federal Reserve’s cut in interest rates will be welcomed by potential home buyers and other borrowers. But many people still struggle with the cost of goods.

Border crossings are down but it took Biden three years to move aggressively. By then perceptions were baked in that he had done a poor job. Trump is doing all he can to keep the flames of that fire burning: witness how he and running mate Sen. JD Vance (Ohio continue to peddle lies about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of local residents. He and Vance continue to stir up a community pleading not to become part of the campaign dialogue.

Harris also has now done a limited number of press interviews. They have drawn mixed reviews. In part that’s because those events are seen through partisan lenses, but also because she has sometimes avoided answering direct questions. There’s no indication that these interviews have helped or hurt. She is checking a box, responding to complaints that she’s avoided unscripted settings.

Biden’s path to victory was seen as limited at best, based on the polls earlier in the summer. His only viable path was to win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, plus one congressional district in Nebraska. That would have put him at exactly 270 electoral votes (including one Nebraska congressional district).

That’s still the most likely path for Harris, winning the combined 44 electoral votes from the trio of northern battlegrounds. But because the polls are so close elsewhere, Harris appears to have other options, though in all the possible combinations, winning Pennsylvania seems essential.

Democrats see a fresh opportunity in North Carolina. The porn-site scandal that has engulfed Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, has thrown the state into turmoil. That could make Trump’s path to victory there more difficult. But few events, other than Biden’s disastrous debate performance, which led to Harris’s entry, have changed the race.

Enthusiasm for her candidacy among Democrats remains high. She held a live stream event with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night in Michigan and drew 10,000 people to a rally in Madison on Friday night. But at the peak of exuberance for her candidacy last month, some Democratic strategists said that September would bring a different reality to Harris’s campaign. That’s the case today.

Early voting has begun and whatever surprises October holds, if any, are still unknown. For Harris, this is a time for grinding, for keeping her organization motivated, for filling in the blanks, for keeping the pressure on Trump, for reaching those few undecided voters, all in the hope of moving the numbers a few tenths of a percentage point every week or so, enough to claim victory in November. But she is not there yet.

Former president Donald Trump spoke by phone this week with a Nebraska state senator as part of a last-minute push to change how the state allocates its electoral votes and block the easiest path Vice President Kamala Harris has to win the White House.

State Sen. Merv Riepe (R) said he spoke briefly by phone with Trump Wednesday in the presence of Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) during a visit by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who encouraged Republicans in the state’s unicameral legislature to change to a statewide winner-take-all electoral vote system.

“I want the law changed. I’ve made no qualms about it,” said Graham, an ally of Trump, who said he traveled to Nebraska at the request of Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), the former governor. “They were open-minded. I said: ‘Listen, it’s your decision to make. It comes down to one electoral vote. I want you to understand what that one vote would mean.’ ”

Nebraska is one of two states that award some of its electoral votes by congressional district, which has given Democrats a good shot at winning a single vote from the Omaha area, despite the overwhelming statewide Republican lean. With that vote, Harris can secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, as long as she also wins her three strongest battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The change is supported by Trump, all of the state’s U.S. senators and congressmen, Pillen and a majority of the unicameral legislature, according to people involved in the process. But Republicans have not yet been able to convince a supermajority of the legislature — all 33 Republican state senators — which would be needed to override a filibuster to pass the change before the November election. Trump previously pushed for a legislative change in April and was rebuffed by lawmakers.

Graham met Wednesday with Pillen and around two dozen state senators about the proposal, according to Graham and Riepe. Before the hour-long luncheon, Riepe said he met with Graham and Pillen and spoke with Trump by phone for a minute or so.

Trump stressed the importance of making the change and “wasn’t threatening in any way at all,” Riepe said Friday in an interview. “Primarily I think he was saying: ‘Look, this is important to me. I’m interested, and I want you to know that I’m not just taking anybody for granted,’ ” Riepe said.

Pillen’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Three people involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, say they think there are multiple holdouts to the change, which would probably face a political backlash in Omaha, where voters have embraced their outsize role in the presidential election and the financial benefits of presidential advertising and campaign visits that come with it.

“The people of the 2nd district are excited to get out to vote, and they are offended by the prospect of the governor and senators and out-of-state interests taking away the opportunity to have their voice be heard,” state Sen. John Cavanaugh (D) said. “Any politician who takes away their vote to have their voice be heard will feel the repercussions at the ballot box.”

One key holdout vote is state Sen. Mike McDonnell, a former Democratic lawmaker who joined the Republican Party this spring after he was censured by Democrats for his antiabortion views. He has repeatedly said he opposes winner-take-all, but his office has suggested that he has not ruled out changing his mind.

“I’m not supporting winner-take-all,” he said in April when he changed parties. This week, his spokesman Barry Rubin told the Nebraska Examiner: “Sen. McDonnell has heard compelling arguments from both sides. … And, as of today, (he) is still a no.”

McDonnell, a former firefighter who has deep ties to organized labor in the state, is widely considered a possible candidate for mayor in Omaha next year. He attended the larger meeting with Pillen and Graham on Wednesday, but has not spoken with Trump, said a person familiar with the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

The Harris campaign declined to comment. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the interview, Riepe said he believed every state should award its electoral votes by congressional district. But since there is no movement to do that, he said he backs having Nebraska adopt a winner-take-all policy. He said he told the governor he supports the change and, at Pillen’s request, signed a document pledging to vote for it.

“McDonnell stood up at the luncheon and said — he was very straightforward — and he said, ‘I’m a no vote,’ ” Riepe said.

Riepe drew national attention last year when he cast a crucial vote to block a six-week abortion ban. He later helped pass a 12-week ban. Riepe said he was probably called into Wednesday’s small meeting because of his voting history.

Graham said he talked to the Nebraska lawmakers about the importance of changing their system to ensure Trump gets as many electoral votes as possible because national security is of paramount concern. He described the state lawmakers as open-minded.

“It’s not just about Nebraska,” Graham said. “It’s international consequences.”

The Arizona Supreme Court’s chief justice ruled Friday that nearly 100,000 voters should receive regular ballots this fall even though there is no record that they had submitted documentation to state officials proving they are citizens.

The battleground state’s high court issued its ruling three days after officials told the justices they had recently discovered state computer systems had identified some longtime residents as having provided citizenship documents even though they had not.

Election officials said they were confident all or nearly all of the voters are citizens, but some allies of former president Donald Trump seized on the issue to suggest large numbers of immigrants could be voting illegally. Voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare, according to election experts, but Trump and his supporters have argued stricter laws are needed to prevent it from happening.

Like other states, Arizona requires people to take an oath stating they are citizens when they register to vote. For the last two decades, Arizona has also required them to show birth certificates, naturalization papers or other documents proving citizenship to vote in all races on the ballot.

Litigation over the law persisted for years, and in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled federal law requires the state to allow registered voters to cast ballots for president and other federal offices even if they have not provided proof of citizenship. In response, the state created a dual registration system that allows people to receive ballots that include races for state and local offices only if they prove they are citizens.

This month, election officials discovered a computer error caused about 98,000 registered voters to be listed as eligible for full ballots even though there was no record they had ever provided citizenship documents.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R) sued Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) on Tuesday and asked the state Supreme Court to immediately take up the case and bar the voters in question from receiving full ballots unless they submit citizenship documents. Fontes argued the court should allow the voters to receive full ballots this fall because the election is so soon. Richer and Fontes described the litigation as a “friendly lawsuit,” saying they shared the goal of getting a quick answer from the court so everyone knows how to handle the matter.

In a nine-page decision, Arizona Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer wrote that the court was rejecting Richer’s request to limit what type of ballots the voters would receive, clearing the way for them to receive full ballots. No dissents were noted.

“We are unwilling on these facts to disenfranchise voters en masse from participating in state contests,” Timmer wrote. “Doing so is not authorized by state law and would violate principles of due process.”

Fontes praised the court for acting quickly.

“Now we can get on with the rest of the preparations for 2024,” Fontes said. “This was the right thing to do for Arizona.”

On social media, Richer thanked the court for acting quickly and said he was pleased the voters would get the full ballots, even though he had asked for the opposite outcome.

“The 100k registrants will continue to vote a full ballot this election,” he wrote on X. “Thank God.”

About 36,500 of the voters are registered as Republicans, about 27,000 as Democrats and about 34,500 as unaffiliated or third party. The partisan breakdown of those voters led some Republicans to fear the court would rule in a way that would make it harder for them to win seats in the narrowly divided legislature and fight a ballot measure aimed at expanding access to abortion.

The case divided Republicans, with some agreeing with Richer that the justices should strictly apply the state’s citizenship law and some siding with Fontes that they should allow the voters to get the same ballots they have in the past.

The people on the list account for about 2 percent of the state’s 4.1 million registered voters. They received their initial driver’s licenses before 1996, got a replacement license sometime after that date and subsequently submitted a voter registration application, either because they moved or registered to vote for the first time.

When they received the replacement license, the state’s computer systems indicated to local elections officials that they had provided citizenship documents even though there is no record that they had. The flaw has existed since 2004, when the state began requiring proof of citizenship for voting, officials said.

Under federal law, election officials are required to send military and overseas ballots to voters by Saturday. Early voting for others in Arizona begins on Oct. 9.

The fight over citizenship documents continues in a separate, long-running case. In 2022, Republican state legislators passed a law to require voters to provide proof of citizenship to vote in all elections, not just state and local ones. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizonans can register to vote for federal elections without providing proof of citizenship while the case continues. It could eventually return to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kamala Harris’s campaign raised more than four times as much as Donald Trump’s effort in August, capitalizing on the surge of Democratic enthusiasm during the first full month of her presidential campaign. But the super PACs aligned with Trump are continuing to raise large sums from high-dollar donors as the two candidates enter the final sprint before November.

Harris’s campaign raised $190 million in August, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday night, and she spent almost $174 million in August — ending the month with $235 million in cash on hand. The campaign spent more than $135 million on media buys and ad production; more than $6 million on air travel; about $4.9 million on payroll and related taxes; and $4.5 million on text messaging.

The Trump campaign’s report showed that he raised $43 million in August and spent $61 million, with $135 million in cash to spend at the beginning of September. His campaign spent more than $47 million on advertisements, alongside $10.2 million on direct mail to potential voters and around $670,000 on air travel.

The Republican National Committee reported Friday night that it raised $40 million in August and ended the month with $79 million in cash on hand. It was both outraised and outspent by its Democratic counterparts, who raised $68 million and spent $84 million to end the month with $50 million in cash on hand.

Earlier this month, Harris officials said her effort and coordinated committees — groups that are jointly raising money for her campaign — raised $361 million in August compared with $130 million raised by Trump’s coordinated effort. But reports that show that full picture will not be available until later this year because some file quarterly rather than monthly. Her campaign built off the excitement in key moments, including her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and the surge of voter interest around the Democratic National Convention. Her aides have said that almost 3 million donors contributed to the August totals for the coordinated committees and that about a third of them were giving for the first time this cycle.

Harris received a surge of cash in the 24 hours after the Sept. 10 debate with the former president, raising $47 million during that period, according to the campaign.

Harris’s flush coffers have allowed her to build out a campaign operation with at least 2,000 aides and 312 offices across the battleground states at the same time she has held an advantage over Trump with her budget for television and digital ads. The Trump campaign, which is relying on outside groups to power its ground game, has not disclosed comparative details about the size of its operation.

Still, reports filed with the FEC on Friday night showed millions of dollars in contributions to Trump-aligned super PACs that are engaged in an intensive effort to cast Harris in a negative light just as many voters are learning about her background and credentials for the first time.

One of the highest profile groups running ads criticizing Harris is Make America Great Again Inc., which has been funded in large part by Timothy Mellon, a reclusive heir to the Mellon family banking fortune. In mid-July, Mellon gave $50 million to Make America Great Again Inc. — bringing the total that he has donated to the group during the 2023-24 cycle to at least $115 million.

MAGA Inc. raised $25 million in August and spent $90 million. The group’s top donors during the period included Wisconsin-based billionaire Diane Hendricks ($10 million), chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald Howard Lutnick ($5 million), hedge fund executive Paul Singer ($5 million) and Texas philanthropist Annette Caldwell Simmons ($2 million).

Future Forward, the largest Democratic-leaning super PAC, raised nearly $37 million in August. The group received $3 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and $1 million from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings. Major environmental groups were also major donors to the group, including the League of Conservation Voters victory fund ($9.2 million), Climate Power Action ($4.5 million) and EDF action votes ($3.9 million).

The Preserve America super PAC bankrolled by billionaire Miriam Adelson, which is also airing ads on Trump’s behalf, is expected to raise as much as $100 million for that effort by Election Day, according to a person familiar with the group’s plans, but their latest campaign finance reports will not be filed until next month. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Adelson and her late husband Sheldon gave more than $90 million to Preserve America, accounting for the vast majority of the money the group raised.

And Save America, the leadership PAC that has been tasked with paying many of Trump’s personal legal bills, reported raising $2,138 but spending $1.9 million to pay lawyers. At the end of August, it owed various legal firms $3.6 million and had $4.8 million in cash on hand.

Despite Harris’s cash advantage, her advisers are urging donors and bundlers to push ahead so they can fund what Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon has described a “relentless battleground operation” that could determine the outcome in a razor-thin race.

O’Malley Dillon argued in a recent memo to Harris fundraisers and supporters that Democrats face more challenges than Republicans in charting their potential paths to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

On Friday, former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton headlined separate fundraisers for Harris in Los Angeles. Harris is headed to New York this weekend to mingle with donors. The campaign is also planning a fundraiser with Harris in Los Angeles on Sept. 29 with photo opportunities starting at $50,000, according to an invitation reviewed by The Washington Post, and guests who give the maximum of almost $1 million are invited to a join a more intimate reception with Harris.

Harris is using her largesse to help with other close races around the country. Earlier this month, the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced a plan to transfer almost $25 million to help down-ballot candidates in state and federal races. That will include $10 million transfers to the Democratic congressional and senatorial campaign committees as they seek to build majorities in the House and Senate.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outraised the National Republican Congressional Committee $22.3 million to $9.7 million. The NRCC was bolstered by a $289,100 donation from Elon Musk, the largest he has reported to the FEC so far this year. The gift was split between the general, headquarters and legal proceedings funds.