Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are effectively dead even where it counts — the battleground states, according to a new poll.
Mirroring the polling group’s findings from a separate survey released earlier this month, both presidential contenders scored 50% apiece in the battleground states, per a CBS News/YouGov survey released Sunday.
Harris, 59, came away with the lead in a national head-to-head matchup between the pair 51% to 48%, which marks an uptick from her prior 50% to 49% edge over him in the prior survey.
Strikingly, 36% of voters felt that they don’t know what Harris stands for, compared to 64% who do, while 14% were unsure what Trump, 78, stands for, compared to 86% who do, per the poll.
Republicans have needled Harris for not being more forthcoming with her policy positions since being abruptly elevated to the top of the Democratic ticket just shy of a month ago.
Last Friday, she laid out an economic agenda featuring a national ban on what she described as “price gauging” (some economists interpreted her campaign’s proposal as price control), a $25,000 tax credit for first-time home purchasers, a beefed up $6,000 child tax credit, and more.
While polling dead even with battleground state voters writ large, the most CBS battleground state breakdown pegged Trump with a very slight upper hand over Harris in the tossup states.
In Pennsylvania, Trump scored 50% to Harris’ 50%, Michigan (48% to 49%), Wisconsin (49% to 49%), Nevada (48% to 50%), Georgia (50% to 48%), Arizona (50% to 49%), and North Carolina (50% to 48%).
The margin of error in each of those states was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Translated into the Electoral College map, if those numbers held, that would mean Trump would get roughly 262 electoral votes compared to Harris’ 247, with the rest tossups. A contender needs 270 to win the presidency.
In the RCP’s no-tossup Electoral College map, Trump eked out a win with 276 votes to 262, indicating that the race is a nail-biter.
Harris has consistently maintained that she is an “underdog” in the race, even as polls have tightened considerably nearly four weeks since she sailed to the top of the ticket.
Both campaigns acknowledge that the presidential race is going to be close.
The CBS News/ YouGov survey also found a spike in Democrats who say they are committing to voting — 87%, which is up from 81% on July 18. Among Republicans, 88% say they will definitely vote, down from 90% on July 18, per the poll.
Along gender lines, 45% of men favored Harris, compared to 54% who preferred Trump, while 56% of women wanted Harris, compared to 44% who selected Trump.
Other polls have pegged a similar gender gap among voters.
Top issues for voters include the economy (83%), inflation (76%), state of democracy (74%), crime (62%), gun policy (58%), US-Mexico border (56%) and abortion (51%).
Trump holds a lead with voters who rank the economy as a top issue as well as those who say they aren’t doing as well financially, according to crosstabs within the poll.
For voters who called the economy a major factor in their decision, 56% went to Trump, compared to 43% for Harris.
The same was true with inflation (61% for Trump, 38% for Harris) and the border (76% to 24%). Harris was ahead on abortion (69% to Trump’s 30%) and on safeguarding democracy (57% to 42%).
The survey sampled 3,258 registered voters between Aug. 14 to 16 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points for the main sample of respondents.
Earlier this month, the Trump campaign lashed out at a CBS News poll that similarly showed the two candidates dead even at 50% apiece in the battleground states.
The campaign alleged that the poll had bumped up the population of self-identifying liberals in the sample of registered voters by about 1.7 percentage points relative to a sample used in its prior poll. Surveys are typically subjected to such variations.
“The Fake News Media continue to help dangerously liberal Kamala hide her record of economic failure and soft-on-crime policies,” senior campaign advisor Brian Hughes chided at the time.