2024 Election: Trump retakes lead in several battleground states, polls show
Harris, Trump court undecided voters as Election Day nears
Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are zeroing in on undecided voters with just over two weeks to go until Election Day. Both candidates also made appearances on FOX News this week. Jesse Byrnes, senior editor with The Hill and Bloomberg Politics Editor Laura Davison join On The Hill to discuss the tight race.
WASHINGTON - We’re officially two weeks out from Election Day and both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are making their last efforts to win over undecided voters in key swing states.
The candidates are polling nearly evenly across the seven battleground states, according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll.
The poll surveyed more than 5,000 registered and likely voters from Sept. 30 through Oct. 15.
According to the poll, 47% of registered voters will definitely or probably support Harris and 47% say they will definitely or probably support Trump. Among likely voters, 49% said they supported Harris while 48% said they would support Trump.
Harris also appeared to have an edge in national polls, according to 270toWin. Their average of 13 recent national polls shows the vice president with a narrow lead over Trump, 49.2% to 47.7%.
The latest data from FiveThirtyEight shows Harris ahead by 1.7% in the national polls while aggregate polling from RealClearPolitics puts her up with an even slimmer margin — 49.3% to Trump's 48.4% — showing an increasingly tight race in the final weeks of campaigning.
Despite Harris being ahead nationally, RealClear Politics shows Trump firmly taking all the key battleground states.
When it comes to those key swing states, the Post-Schar poll has Harris ahead in only four of seven — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump leads in Arizona and North Carolina while the candidates are tied in Nevada.
FiveThirtyEight puts Trump ahead in four states, including Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In their poll, Trump and Harris are tied in Michigan, leaving her ahead in just Nevada and Wisconsin.
The Associated Press reports record early voter turnout among Republicans in several of these states, particularly Georgia and North Carolina.
Trump turned against early in-person and mail-in voting amid his 2020 election conspiracy theories but the party has once again encouraged voters to cast their ballots early.
While not considered a swing state, Republicans appear to be passing Democrats when it comes to early in-person voting in Virginia for the first time.
According to the nonprofit Virginia Public Access Project, Republicans are likely to have cast 46.5% of early in-person ballots, while Democrats likely account for 45.5%. While that’s not a big advantage, the fact that Republicans have ticked ahead at all is surprising.
FiveThirtyEight shows Harris with a solid lead over Trump in the Commonwealth with 50.1% of the vote while Trump has 43.1%. RealClearPolitics shows similar numbers with a 6.4% lead over Trump — 50.4% to 44%.
The GOP’s push to get Republicans to vote early is producing results with the national number now above 17 million but it remains how it will affect the final result of the race.
The early vote data only reveals whether voters are registered with a party, not who they are voting for, and the early electorate can change from day to day as more people vote early.