Dead heat in swing states
By Dave Andrusko
FYI: “I’ve talked to my team. I want us to get an interview scheduled before the end of the month,” Harris said before boarding Air Force Two to head to Arizona.
There are 88 days until the November 5 elections and the presidential race has clearly tightened since worried Democrats eased the hapless Joe Biden out of running for a second term. Most polls show pro-life former President Donald Trump and pro-abortion Vice President Kamala Harris essentially in a statistical tie.
The outlier on the Harris side is the new Ipsos poll which shows Harris up 42% to 37%. Meanwhile a CNBC poll shows Trump up by 2%–48% to 46%. Figuring out what has stayed essentially the same since Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee and what has changed is the order of the day.
According to CNBC’s Steve Liesman
After the replacement of President Joe Biden with Harris, an assassination attempt on Trump and the Republican convention, Trump’s 48%-46% lead is within the CNBC survey’s margin of error and unchanged from the 45%-43% lead Trump held against Biden in the NBC News July Survey. While the head-to-head competition remains the same, there have been dramatic but offsetting changes beneath the surface for both sides that have kept the race even.
The most dramatic shift: 81% of Democrats are satisfied with Harris as their nominee, compared with just 33% who were satisfied with Biden. But that was partially offset by a 9-point gain among Republicans who are satisfied with Trump as the nominee, bringing his number to 80%.
Interest in the election rose 3 points for Democrats, but it rose 2 points for Republicans. Young voters showed far greater supporter for Harris than they did for Biden, backing the vice president now by 10 points, compared with backing Trump by 2 points in the NBC July poll. That was offset by a big swing of 12 points among voters aged 35-49 toward Trump. The age group now supports Trump by 9 points. Harris’ net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) improved from -15 in the July NBC survey to -8, but Trump’s improved about the same amount to -9.
The state of the economy remains Harris’s Achilles Heel. By a whopping 2-1 margin, Americans believe that financially they will be better off under Trump. By party, while 48% of Democrats believe they will be better off under Harris, an overwhelming 79% of Republicans believe their economy fortunes will improve if Trump returns to the White House.
Paul Bedard, of the Washington Examiner notes that
The big change in that survey is the apparent shift of support from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Trump. A week earlier, Trump led Harris by just 1 point in the six-way matchup, while Kennedy was at 5%. Now, Kennedy is at 3%, and Trump leads Harris in that multi-candidate lineup 49%-44%.
There are also some new numbers for the swing states—those handful of states where the election will be decided. Results released Thursday by Ipsos shows that “voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada have Harris and Trump in a ‘statistical dead heat for the presidency,’” according to Lauren Irwin.
In another swing state, a new poll conducted by Marquette Law School found that “Harris and Trump are essentially tied in a matchup. Among registered voters, 49% chose Harris and 50% chose Trump; among likely voters, the percentages flip,” Therese Boudreaux reported.
Interestingly, “Despite Harris and Trump polling almost the same numbers, the majority of Wisconsin voters believe Trump has a greater chance at winning the election than Harris, with Trump at 51% and Harris at 38%.”
More on Monday