New polls from The New York Times, CNN and CNBC confirm what we already knew about the presidential election contest: It’s a dead heat nationally heading into the final days of the race and continues to be incredibly close in the seven key swing states.
The race has gotten even tighter. The CNN poll, conducted October 20 to 23, finds Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied at 47% apiece among likely voters, compared to a negligible 48-47 edge for Harris last month. Just 2% of likely voters surveyed now say they haven’t yet chosen a candidate, though another 9% say that they could change their minds.
The New York Times/Siena College poll, also conducted October 20 to 23, similarly finds the candidates deadlocked at 48% apiece among likely voters. “The result, coming less than two weeks before Election Day, and as millions of Americans have already voted, is not encouraging for Ms. Harris,” the Times’s Adam Nagourney and Ruth Igielnik write.
The CNBC survey shows Trump up by two points nationally, 48% to 46%, within the 3.1% margin of error. That’s similar to the results of a Wall Street Journal poll published Wednesday, which saw Trump leading Harris 47% to 45%.
Increasingly negative views of Harris: The Trump campaign (and Harris herself, perhaps) have succeeded in driving down her favorability ratings and increasing negative opinions of her. In last month’s CNN survey, 45% of registered voters said they had a favorable opinion of Harris, while 49% indicated an unfavorable opinion of her, for a net favorability rating of -4 percentage points. The latest CNN poll finds 41% with a favorable view and 52% on the negative side, for a net rating of -11 points. Trump’s net favorability rating, meanwhile, has gone from -12 points in September to -13 points this month in the CNN poll. The Times finds him just two points underwater, 50-48 — the same as Harris.
That means the Trump campaign strategy may be working: At The Bulwark, Steve Schale, a veteran Democratic political strategist, tells Marc A. Caputo that Trump’s playbook for this race looks a lot like the one his campaign advisor Susie Wiles and pollster Tony Fabrizio used to help Republican Rick Scott get elected as Florida’s governor in 2010.
“I’ve been up against the Susie playbook and learned how it works the hard way. It’s pretty simple: drive up the negatives on the opponent to [the] point that the choice comes down to one thing that her candidate has an advantage on—in this case, the economy,” Schale said. “I suspect that’s what’s going on here with their ad strategy—driving Harris negatives down into the barrel with Trump—and that’s a real thing my side has to guard against.”
Voters also have a particularly dour view of the country right now. Just 28% of voters in the Times poll say the country is on the right track and just 32% in the CNN survey say things are going very well or fairly well today, down from 38% as of January. Only 16% in the CNN survey say their finances have improved over the last year, while 49% say they are worse off now.
But Harris may have narrowed Trumps’ edge on the economy. In the Times poll, Trump holds a six-point edge on the question of which candidate would do a better job on the economy, down from 13 points last month. But the CNN polls still finds Trump with a 13-point advantage on the issue among likely voters, up from 11 points last month.
The CNBC poll found that Trump has a 5-point advantage nationally on “the needs of the middle class” — but Harris had a 3-point edge on the issue in battleground states, suggesting her messaging has worked in those spots.
And she may have some upside remaining. “About 15 percent of voters described themselves as not fully decided, and Ms. Harris is leading with that group, 42 percent to 32 percent,” the Times reports. “Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump had a minute edge with undecided or persuadable voters, 36 percent to 35 percent.”
Trump might win the popular vote. No Republican has won the popular vote since 2004, when George W. Bush secured a second term, but Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst at The New York Times, writes that “there’s more than enough” in the polling “to make it easy to imagine a Trump popular vote victory.”
But Harris could win the Electoral College even if Trump pulls off that rare Republican feat, as Cohn notes that “all the pieces for a Harris victory in the Midwest remain in place, even as her national lead keeps fading.”
About 35 million people have already voted. The race has been incredibly close (yes, and extremely loud) for a while now, and with so many votes already cast, it may be harder for the candidates to generate any dramatic shift that would change the outcome.
“Harris has likely banked more votes than Trump so far, given Democrats’ higher propensity to vote early or by mail,” CNN notes, citing its new poll, which found that a fifth of likely voters say they have already cast their ballots and those voters favor Harris, 61% to 36%. Those in the CNN poll who say they haven’t yet voted favor Trump, 50% to 44%.
