A new Wall Street Journal poll has found little separation between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in seven battleground states, prompting a Democratic pollster to say that the 2024 election “really could not be closer.”
The survey of 600 registered voters in each of the states, which was conducted Sept. 28-Oct. 8 with a margin of error of +/-4 percentage points, found that in a head-to-head contest, Trump and Harris are tied in North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Harris leads Trump 48%-46% in Arizona and Georgia, and 49%-47% in Michigan, according to the poll. In Nevada, Trump has his biggest swing state lead of 49%-43%, while he leads Harris in Pennsylvania 47%-46%, the poll also found.
“It really could not be closer,” Democrat Michael Bocian, one of the pollsters who worked on the survey, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s an even-steven, tight, tight race.”
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Overall, Trump leads Harris 46%-45%, with 93% of Democrats and Republicans across the seven states indicating their support for their parties’ respective candidates.
As for independent voters, 40% said they would vote for Harris, compared to 39% for Trump.
On the issues, voters say they trusted Trump more to handle the economy, inflation and immigration and border security.
They preferred Harris when it comes to housing affordability, abortion, health care and having someone in the Oval Office who cares about you.
The poll found that 47% of voters believe Trump will stand up better for the American worker, compared to 45% for Harris, and that nearly two-thirds believe the national economy is poor or not so good.
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“This thing is a dead heat and is going to come down to the wire. These last three weeks matter,” Republican pollster David Lee told the Journal.
The newspaper cited Lee as saying that around this time in 2020, Biden had polling average leads of more than 5 points over Trump in each of the industrial northern swing states, compared to the narrower margins Harris is facing right now.
However, Bocian says that Trump had a “clear advantage” over Biden in March — the last time the Journal polled the swing states — during a period where third-party candidates were having a “massive impact” on the numbers.
“Now the third-party support has evaporated almost completely, and the race is tied in all the states,” he said.
