Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are within one percentage point of each other—a virtual tie—in three new polls of Pennsylvania this week, as polling averages show the race is essentially even in the battleground state that’s likely to decide the winner of the 2024 election.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a moderated ... [+]
Harris holds a narrow 49%-48% lead over Trump in a Cooperative Election Study poll released this week (3,685 respondents, polled as part of a national study by universities conducted by YouGov), while Trump has a 47%-46% lead in a Quinnipiac poll published Wednesday (margin of error 2.1 points).
Meanwhile, the candidates are tied at 48% in a CNN/SSRS poll also out Wednesday.
Last week, Harris led Trump 50%-48.2% among likely voters in a Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey (margin of error 3), and Harris was ahead 49%-47% in a Washington Post/Schar School poll (margin of error 4.6), while Trump was up 49%-48% in an Emerson poll (margin of error 3.4).
Earlier this month, Harris led Trump by three points, 50%-47%, in a pair of New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College polls released Oct. 12, while Trump was up 47%-46% in a Sept. 28-Oct. 8 Wall Street Journal poll of registered voters who said they would “definitely” or “probably” vote for either candidate.
The polling averages are close to tied, with a narrow Trump edge: Trump leads by 0.5 points in Pennsylvania in FiveThirtyEight’s average.
Pennsylvania has more electoral votes, 19, than any other battleground, and Pennsylvanians routinely pick winners, voting for 10 of the last 12 White House winners—the candidate who has won Pennsylvania has also won Michigan and Wisconsin (the three states together are known as the “blue wall”) in the past eight elections.
Pennsylvania is far more likely to tip the election than any other battleground state, according to Silver’s election forecasting model, which also found both candidates have a more than 85% chance of winning the election if they secure Pennsylvania.
Trump became the first Republican to win Pennsylvania since the 1980s in the 2016 election, and Biden—who is originally from Scranton, Pennsylvania— reversed the trend in 2020, with the state to putting him over the 270-vote threshold needed to win the Electoral College
Pennsylvania is also significant to Trump personally, as he was shot there while speaking at a rally near Butler on July 14.
The state has a large share of white, working class voters, with nearly 75% of the population identifying as non-Hispanic white—a demographic Trump typically performs well with, though Harris has made inroads with white voters compared to Biden’s performance in 2020, trailing Trump by only three points nationally, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll, after Trump won the demographic by 12 points in 2020.
No Democrat has won the White House without Pennsylvania since 1948. If Harris wins Pennsylvania, and the trend of also winning Wisconsin and Michigan holds, she’s all but certain to win the White House.
If Trump maintains his leads in Arizona and Georgia, and wins North Carolina, as he’s expected to, he would need just one of the “Blue Wall” states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) to win the White House.
82%. That’s the share of registered voters in Pennsylvania who said the economy is a major factor in their 2024 vote, followed by inflation at 78% and the state of democracy at 70%, according to a CBS/YouGov survey. The results are on par with the national electorate, according to a recent Pew Research survey of registered voters that found 81% of registered voters rate the economy as “very important” in the election.
Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked Harris over her previous endorsement of a fracking ban—Pennsylvania is the country’s second-largest natural gas producer. “Fracking? She’s been against it for 12 years,” Trump said during the debate in Philadelphia. Harris, who said during a 2019 CNN climate town hall while she was running for president “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” has said she’s since changed her stance. During a debate with Trump, Harris said she made “very clear” in 2020 that she’s against a fracking ban, presumably referring to her vice presidential debate with Mike Pence, and noted the Inflation Reduction Act opened new gas leases—reiterating a stance she took 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 then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “will not end fracking.”
Pennsylvania has a divided state legislature. The state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, is widely popular in the state. Democrats also control the House, but Republicans hold the majority in the Senate.
How Kamala Harris’ Views On Fracking Have Changed—After Backtracking On Ban (Forbes)
Trump Vs. Harris 2024 Polls: Harris Up By 1 Point—As Her Lead Plateaus Before Debate (Forbes)