A national poll conducted by The New York Times/Siena College shows Donald Trump and Kamala Harris virtually tied heading into the final week of the campaign, heightening the importance of Tuesday’s presidential debate.
The poll, released Sunday, showed Trump leading Harris by one percentage point, 48% to 47%, within the poll’s margin of error of 3%, meaning either candidate could win the Nov. 5 election.
Meanwhile, a CBS/YouGov poll conducted on Sunday showed a similarly close race in key battleground states, with Harris holding narrow leads in Michigan (50% to 49%) and Wisconsin (51% to 49%), and a tie in Pennsylvania.
The Trump campaign endured a relatively tough few weeks after Democrat President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July, but the latest polls suggest Trump has not lost any of his core support base.
A notable finding in the New York Times poll was that while voters have largely made up their minds about Trump, they feel they need to know more about Harris: 28% of voters said they needed more information about the Democratic candidate, while only 9% said the same about Trump.
The poll suggests Tuesday’s presidential debate could be a key moment.
Harris will have a chance to outline more details about her policy plans during the 90-minute debate with Trump in a race that is so close that even a slight advantage for either candidate could mean big things.
In response to the latest polls, Harris’ re-election campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in an email to supporters on Sunday, “As VP Harris has said from day one, we are behind in this race. We have a lot of work to do to ensure our victory in November, and that requires us to continue to fundraise aggressively.”
“The Electoral College favors Republican candidates. Even in 2020, when Biden and Harris won the most votes in history, the election was decided by a margin of around 45,000 votes across battleground states. We expect the race to be similarly close this November, with every vote counting.”
In a CBS poll asking who is in sufficient mental and cognitive health to serve as president, Harris led Trump by double digits, with 71% saying they found Trump’s comments about the vice president offensive and unfavorable.
But the economy and inflation proved to be the main factor driving voters to support Trump over Harris, with white, non-college-educated voters broadly in favor of Trump as someone who offers economic opportunity to working-class people (53% vs. 27%).
The key numbers in the latest New York Times poll are similar to a previous similar survey released in late July, shortly after Biden decided not to seek reelection, which also showed Trump up 1 percentage point, within the margin of error.
Polls in seven key battleground states that are likely to determine the election winner also consistently show a close race, with the latest polls showing Harris narrowly ahead of Trump in Wisconsin (50% to 47%), Michigan (49% to 47%) and Pennsylvania (49% to 48%).
A separate NYT/Siena poll last month that focused only on those key battleground states showed Harris leading Trump by 4 percentage points (50% to 46%).
Harris has been active on the campaign trail since replacing Biden as the Democratic candidate over the summer, but has refrained from making unscripted appearances and kept interviews with the press to a minimum.
Reuters