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topicnews · October 8, 2024

Harris has a lead of less than a point in the poll averages

Harris has a lead of less than a point in the poll averages

Topline

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are nearly tied in Pennsylvania, according to two new polls in the battleground state this week. A victory for both candidates could pave the way to the White House.

Important facts

Harris leads Pennsylvania by 0.8 points in the FiveThirtyEight polling average and the two are tied in the Real Clear Politics polling average, while an Emerson College poll released Oct. 1 showed a 48% tie and a Bloomberg/Morning poll Consult found that Harris has a five-point lead of 0.8%.

Pennsylvania has more electoral votes than any other battleground, with 19, and Pennsylvanians routinely pick winners by voting for 10 of the last 12 White House winners – the candidate who won Pennsylvania also won Michigan and Wisconsin (the three States collectively are known as the “blue wall”) won in the last eight elections.

Pennsylvania has a 32 percent chance of winning the election, far more than any other battleground state. This is according to political analyst Nate Silver’s election prediction model, which found that Harris has an 88.8% chance of winning the election if she wins Pennsylvania, while Trump has a 92.4% chance of winning.

Trump became the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since the 1980s in the 2016 election, and Biden, originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania, reversed the trend in 2020 by putting the state over the 270-vote threshold , which was needed to win the College, when the Associated Press called Pennsylvania for Biden four days after the election.

To underscore Pennsylvania’s weight in the 2024 election, ABC News chose to host the first Trump-Harris presidential debate there in Philadelphia; Pennsylvania is also personally significant to Trump because he was shot there on July 14 while speaking at a rally near Butler.

Pennsylvania has a large share of working-class white voters, with nearly 75% of the population identifying as non-Hispanic white — a demographic with which Trump typically does well, although Harris made gains among white voters compared to Biden’s performance in 2020 has and is behind According to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll, Trump has a national lead of just three points, after winning the demographic by 12 points in 2020.

Surprising fact

Since 1948, no Democrat has won the White House without Pennsylvania. If Harris wins Pennsylvania and the trend of winning Wisconsin and Michigan also continues, it is all but certain that she will win the White House.

Big number

82%. That’s the share of registered voters in Pennsylvania who said the economy would be an important factor in their vote in 2024, followed by inflation at 78% and the state of democracy at 70%, according to the CBS/YouGov poll . According to a recent Pew Research survey of registered voters, the results are consistent with the national electorate. 81% of registered voters rate the economy as “very important” in the election.

Main critic

Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked Harris over her past support for a ban on fracking – Pennsylvania is the country’s second-largest natural gas producer. “Fracking? She’s been against it for 12 years,” Trump said during Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia. Harris, who said during a 2019 CNN climate conference during her presidential run, “I’m in favor of a fracking ban, without a doubt,” said she has since changed her stance. During Tuesday’s debate, she said she had been “very clear” in 2020 that she opposed a fracking ban, presumably referring to her vice presidential debate with Mike Pence in a CNN interview last month. Harris didn’t actually say she changed her own position on the issue during the 2020 debate — instead, she said that then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden “won’t end fracking.”

tangent

Pennsylvania has a divided state legislature. The state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, enjoys wide popularity in the state. Democrats also control the House of Representatives, but Republicans have the majority in the Senate.

Important background

Harris leads Trump in four of seven battleground states, while Trump is ahead in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. This is according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages in all seven battleground states (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin). If Trump maintains his leads in Arizona and Georgia and wins North Carolina as expected, he would only need one of the blue wall states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) to win the White House.

Further reading

Swing state polls for the 2024 election: Harris is just ahead of Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin – but tied in Pennsylvania (Forbes)

How Kamala Harris’ views on fracking have changed — after she backtracked on the ban (Forbes)

Trump vs. Harris polls 2024: Harris rises 1 point – her leader remains standing before the debate (Forbes)

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