Former President Donald Trump is ahead by two points in a head-to-head matchup with Vice President Kamala Harris in a new HarrisX/Forbes poll of likely voters—the latest survey to show the race is virtually unpredictable less than two weeks before Election Day.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Greensboro Coliseum on October 22, ... [+]
Trump leads 51% to 49% nationally when the survey factors in likely voters who are leaning toward one candidate, according to the online poll of 1,244 likely voters taken Oct. 21-22 and released Wednesday (margin of error 2.5)—a noticeable shift from Harris’ four-point lead last month.
In a four-way race with third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein on on the ballot, Trump leads by one point, 49% to 48% nationally among likely voters, when so-called learners are factored in.
Without leaners, Trump and Harris are tied at 47% among likely voters in a four-way race when respondents are given the option to say they don’t know or are unsure who they’ll vote for, while Trump leads by one point—49% to 48%—in a two-way race, with 4% of voters undecided.
The results indicate the race could flip in either direction as 12% of likely voters and 18% of registered voters said they are still weighing the choices, indicating they could change their minds.
The poll comes as Harris and Trump are locked in a neck-and-neck race for the White House less than two weeks from election day, with political analysts and surveys split on who will win.
HarrisX founder and CEO Dritan Nesho called the election a “dynamic, competitive race to the very end,” noting it will “come down to both turnout and, importantly, the X-factor of the 18 percent of swing voters who still say they may change their mind.”
Harris leads by 1.7 points in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, as Trump has narrowed the advantage Harris posted in the immediate aftermath of President Joe Biden’s exit from the race.
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“On one side VP Harris is leading the expected early vote by double digits, and winning ballots cast to date by a ratio of almost two to one. On the other side former President Trump has closed the polling gap nationally to a tie to a slight advantage, showing a swing in polling and momentum to his advantage,” Nesho said.
- That’s how many points Harris led Trump by in a previous Forbes/HarrisX poll taken Sept. 11-13 with learners factored in.
New predictions from prominent politicos out Wednesday suggest the race is virtually tied: Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville wrote he is “certain Kamala Harris will win” in a New York Times op-ed, while data analyst Nate Silver wrote, also in The Times, his “gut says Donald Trump,” adding the disclaimer that the race is so close that readers shouldn’t “put any value whatsoever on anyone’s gut.”
Harris still leads nationally in most surveys, including five since Friday, that show her with anywhere from a one- to a four-point lead, though Trump regained a lead over Harris in a Fox News poll released Oct. 16 that shows him with a two-point advantage. The seven battleground states most likely to decide the election are even closer: Trump is ahead in North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, and Harris leads in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, according to Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin. The two are tied in Pennsylvania and no candidate leads by more than two points in any of the swing states.
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