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Where the race between Trump and Harris stands on Labor Day, according to our polling expert
By Steven Shepard,
6 hours ago
Of the seven states that both campaigns have identified as the core Electoral College battlegrounds, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in three of them. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
Labor Day is a critical mile-marker on the road to the general election, and Kamala Harris has reached it with a slim advantage over Donald Trump. But the former president would still be well within striking distance if the election were held today.
Because of Republicans’ advantage in the Electoral College, a race that Harris leads nationally by between 2 and 4 percentage points, on average, is the equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth, and it’s set to be decided in a smaller-than-usual number of states.
The polls are extraordinarily tight in all of them, and that isn’t expected to change much over the next nine weeks. In modern presidential elections, where the race stands on Labor Day is usually pretty close to where it ends up once the votes are counted.
Of the seven states that both campaigns have identified as the core Electoral College battlegrounds, Harris leads Trump in three of them — the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — according to multiple polling averages. But those leads are small: In only one state, Wisconsin, does an average show a greater than 3-point margin for the vice president.
In three others — Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — the polls are so close that different polling averages have different leaders as of Sunday night.
Only in the remaining swing state — North Carolina, which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 — does the former president lead in all three polling averages: FiveThirtyEight, RealClearPolitics and Silver Bulletin, the new data-journalism site from FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver. But that lead is only around 1 point.
The three states where Harris has a modest lead would be sufficient to win the presidency if she also wins the traditionally blue states and earns the electoral vote from Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, where a Split Ticket/SurveyUSA poll released on Saturday gave her a 5-point lead over Trump.
In short: Harris is narrowly ahead in the Rust Belt — which would be enough to win — but Trump is breathing down her neck. And those are also the states where the polling has been least accurate and specifically underestimated Trump in the past two elections. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led Trump in all three states in 2016, only to lose them. And now-President Joe Biden’s prospects looked like a slam dunk going into the 2020 election, but he barely escaped with victories in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, the candidates are essentially tied in the Sun Belt, where Trump is narrowly leading in the only state he won in the past that’s now up for grabs. That’s a big change from earlier in the summer, when Trump held consistent leads in the Sun Belt states over Biden when he was the presumptive nominee.
The current swing-state dynamic in large part reflects the existing partisanship of the battlefield. The three states in which Harris leads consistently are also where, before Trump’s 2016 victory, Republicans hadn’t won since either 1988 (Michigan and Pennsylvania) or 1984 (Wisconsin). All three also have Democratic governors who won their 2022 races by at least 2.5 percentage points.
Of the four other states, only Nevada — where Republicans haven’t won a presidential election since 2004 or a Senate race since 2012 — is generally considered blue-leaning. The other three have only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once this century: Arizona (2020), Georgia (2020) and North Carolina (2008).
There are still nine weeks left until Election Day. But battleground state by battleground state, the race is careening toward another close finish.
Here’s the latest polling in the seven most competitive states:
Though Trump leads narrowly in two of the three polling averages, the lone high-quality poll conducted after last month’s Democratic convention, from Fox News , showed Harris 1 point ahead of Trump, 50 percent to 49 percent.
Another state where Harris led a post-convention Fox News poll last week, by 2 points, but the averages mostly tip ever so slightly toward Trump.
Signs appear before a campaign event for Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, Friday, Aug. 30, 2024, in Johnstown, Pa. | Alex Brandon/AP
Democrats’ fortunes have improved in Nevada, where the post-convention polling generally shows Harris slightly ahead – including a recent Fox News poll giving her a 2-point edge.
The only battleground state where Trump leads in all three averages, but it’s still only by about 1 point — which was also his margin in last week’s Fox News poll .
There’s been a dearth of polling in Pennsylvania, where there hasn’t been a high-quality independent survey since the first half of August. Harris leads the averages narrowly, but the race is still exceedingly tight in the most important swing state.
It’s a similar drought in Wisconsin, where Harris led in higher-quality polls conducted earlier in August. Republican-leaning pollsters have the most recent data, which is why outlets that adjust the numbers to account for partisan lean show Harris with a larger lead than those that don’t.
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