Kamala Harris has crept just ahead of her Republican rival, Donald Trump, in the 2024 presidential election, according to some influential new polls.

The race is neck-and-neck, but Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, now leads Trump by 1.4 points in a national polling average presented yesterday by Nate Silver in his Silver Bulletin news letter. Silver is a prominent US uber-number-cruncher and the founder of FiveThirtyEight.

Silver added that Harris has a 51 percent chance of winning the electoral college. He said the election is a toss-up, but declared himself “bullish for Harris”.

He also cites a new CBS poll, more on that shortly.

Kamala Harris is very close to naming her choice of vice-presidential candidate to join her on the Democratic ticket to fight the 2024 election against Donald Trump this November.

She has been talking to final contenders over the weekend and she needs to announce her choice before tomorrow evening, when Harris and her running mate are due to appear together at a rally in Philadelphia to raise the curtain on their campaign together. The “veepstakes” has been very exciting.

Last Friday, the Democratic party announced that Harris, the sitting US vice-president, had secured enough votes from party delegates to become the presidential nominee, making her the first Black woman and person of south Asian heritage to lead a major party ticket.

The six contenders to be named, as early as today, as her No 2 are state governors Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania), Tim Walz (Minnesota), Andy Beshear (Kentucky), JB Pritzker (Illinois), and US Senator for Arizona Mark Kelly and the current transportation secretary in the Biden-Harris administration, Pete Buttigieg.

Good morning, it’s going to be quite the week in US political news, starting with big news as early as today as we wait for Kamala Harris to pick her running mate for the 2024 election. Let’s get going:

• US vice-president Kamala Harris needs to announce who her choice of vice-presidential candidate is, now that she’s the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, before a crucial event scheduled tomorrow.

• Harris could announce the name today or even tomorrow – she is going to appear for a rally with her presumptive No 2 in Philadelphia tomorrow evening. The format of the announcement is not yet known.

• Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Arizona senator Mark Kelly met with Harris at her residence in Washington DC yesterday, she met with transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg last Friday and has probably had remote meetings with the other contenders, the governors of Kentucky and Illinois, Andy Beshear and JB Pritzker, respectively.

• Harris and her veep contender will start a tour in the must-win swing state of Pennsylvania, then Wednesday through Saturday they’ll zip through the other swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, in that order.

• Donald Trump is busy figuring out how to counter the renewed energy and financial giving on the Democratic side as Harris is shown continuing to catch up to the Republican presidential nominee in some new polls.

• Independent presidential candidate and a member of the Kennedy political dynasty, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has hit the headlines thanks to a profile in the New Yorker. He excoriated Trump before sucking up to him and also in a bizarre stunt he dumped a dead bear in New York’s Central Park a decade ago, to make it look as though a cyclist had hit it.

• Joe Biden will meet with his national security team at the White House this afternoon, accompanied by Harris, as tensions escalate in the Middle East, chiefly concerning Israel, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. The US president is due to speak with King Abdullah of Jordan this morning before traveling to Washington DC from Delaware.

• Our global team in London is running live blogs to cover the developing news across financial markets, as Wall Street follows others in plunging this morning, and the Middle East, where observers are braced amid extreme tension between Israel and Iran.