Put your phone down, and back slowly away from those election forecasts. In a presidential race that has remained stubbornly close for weeks, nothing short of a campaign-shattering seismic event is likely to budge the polls much in the next few days.

But the polls have much to offer beyond the horse race. Throughout this campaign, pollsters have been asking voters a broad range of questions, and the answers will help tell the story of this election and provide valuable context in the weeks to come.

Who represents ‘change’?

Consider this: For more than a decade, most Americans have been saying that the country is on the wrong track, and this election cycle is no different. On average, about two-thirds of Americans are saying it right now. Former President Donald J. Trump has broadly campaigned by promising a return to a prosperous past, and Vice President Kamala Harris on moving toward a brighter future. The question is, which direction do voters think they want to go?

Mr. Trump has highlighted Ms. Harris’s role in President Biden’s administration, while she has made the promise of “not going back” to Mr. Trump’s era and brand of politics. These are strategic decisions when considered in terms of other common polling metrics: job approval and favorability. Job approval measures how many voters approve or disapprove of how a candidate is doing their job (or did their job, in Mr. Trump’s case). Favorability, obviously, measures whether voters express a favorable or unfavorable view of them.

Currently, Mr. Biden has a favorability rating of 40 percent on average and a 38 percent approval rating, according to a tracker from FiveThirtyEight. When Mr. Trump left office, his average was 39 percent, but in recent polls Americans have been more generous (as they’ve tended to be after presidents have left office), giving his performance a 48 percent approval rating in an October NBC News poll. While the Trump campaign aims to tie Ms. Harris’s fortunes to those of President Biden and his low ratings, the Harris campaign hopes to remind voters of how they felt about Mr. Trump when he was in office.

“When you have an incumbent president whose job approval nationally is in the high 30s, that’s just got to be a huge burden on the party trying to retain the White House,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll.