On the eve of the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris has a four-point lead over former President Donald Trump among likely voters nationwide, according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. Harris’ approval rating among likely voters is 51% to Trump’s 47%, just over the poll’s margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Just over half of independents support the Republican candidate, giving her a 5-point lead over Harris.
Interactive map: Create your own predictions for the 2024 presidential election based on the Cook Political Report’s racial ratings
“This has been, and continues to be, a close election,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. “As far as the popular vote goes, she’s the one to lose.”
“We went through all of this to get back to where you ended up four years ago.”
The 2024 campaign was shaped by dramatic events unlike any other election year in modern American history. The incumbent president and potential Democratic candidate has withdrawn from the race with less than four months left until Election Day. She was the first woman of color to be nominated as a major party candidate. Two assassination attempts against Republican candidates. And the same candidate was convicted of 34 felonies.
Nevertheless, the voters surveyed in this poll are very similar to those in 2020, who supported President Joe Biden with 51% of the popular vote and supported President Trump with 47%.
WATCH: Harris and Trump appeal to voters in very different tones in final election day
“We went through all of this… to get back to where we were almost four years ago,” Miringoff said. “Let’s see if the Electoral College reflects that.”
Behind the top-line numbers, Milingoff noted some changes in the close margins that explain the coalition behind both candidates and why the polls remain close.
Most notably, the gender gap was cut in half in the final month of the campaign.
Mr. Trump maintains his lead among men, but his 16-point lead over Ms. Harris in October has shrunk to 4 points. At the same time, 55% of women said they supported Harris in the latest poll. The vice president’s lead among women has narrowed from 18 points to 11 points since last month.
The gender split in this poll is about the same as the 2020 split between Biden and Trump, according to AP VoteCast voter research.
Graphic: Jenna Cohen/PBS News
But when it comes to race, the latest poll finds that support for the two candidates has shifted slightly since the last presidential election.
Trump leads Harris among white voters, 54% to 45%, but Harris’ 9-point lead is a 12-point advantage Trump had with this group in 2020. It’s a slight improvement.
Instead, Harris is seeing some decline among Black and Latino voters, who together made up about 20% of the vote in 2020. Harris is supported by 83% of likely black voters and 61% of likely Latino voters, down 8 points and 2 points, respectively. , from shares that supported Biden in 2020.
In the vice president’s closing arguments to voters in recent weeks, she has emphasized reaching out to Republican voters disillusioned with President Trump and sought to remind them of the turmoil that ensued during the Trump presidency. . Harris has been campaigning in battleground states with prominent Republican supporters, including former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kingsinger. A PBS News/NPR/Marist investigation suggests her efforts may be working.
Eight percent of Republicans say they will vote for Harris, an increase of three points from a month ago and twice the number of Democrats who say they support Trump.
“In a close game, that’s potentially a big problem,” Miringoff said.
More than 78 million votes have already been cast, according to the University of Florida Election Research Institute. 55% of potential voters in this poll report having already voted. One-third of voters say they plan to vote in person on Election Day, including 40% of Trump supporters.
Among those who have already voted, Ms. Harris leads Mr. Trump 56% to 42%. But among voters who haven’t cast a ballot yet, 53% plan to vote for Trump. Meanwhile, 45% support Harris.
WATCH: What early voting data suggests about this year’s election
Opinion polls released in the final stages of a presidential election often attract a great deal of attention. That includes a Des Moines Register poll from the weekend that showed Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump by 3 points in Iowa, and three Marist polls from last weekend. It found Harris leading Trump in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. But both Democrats and Republicans have been quick to point out that what matters is what happens after voting closes on Tuesday.
Miringoff has a similar warning for poll-obsessed political observers.
“If you want to know who’s going to win, who’s going to win each state, that’s not what this article is going to tell you. It’s just going to show you that she has an advantage by being in there.” Miringoff said. “Polls continue to monitor how polarized the country is.”
Preserving democracy and inflation are voters’ top concerns
One of the biggest differences between candidates Trump and Hari is their beliefs about why people go to the polls and what happens after the polls close.
A majority of Harris supporters (51%) say preserving democracy is their top priority when deciding who to vote for. A third or more people list abortion as their second most important issue.
The biggest issues for Trump supporters are inflation and immigration.
acceptance of election results
After voting ends and a winner is determined, 71 percent of likely voters say they should accept the result if their chosen candidate is the loser. 27% said the losing candidate should contest the outcome in that scenario.
President Trump continues to spread baseless lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. “I should never have left the White House” after losing to Biden, he told an audience at one of his final campaign rallies in Pennsylvania on Sunday. He has likewise begun to lay the groundwork to contest the 2024 election results if he loses.
43% of his supporters think he should contest the election results if he loses. Thirteen percent of Harris supporters said the same.
In preparation for Election Day, fencing has been erected around the White House and the Capitol, and many commercial buildings in central Washington have been boarded up in anticipation of potentially violent demonstrations.
72% of likely voters are concerned about violence as a result of the election. This includes 85% of Harris supporters and 57% of Trump supporters.
