(The Center Square) – One of the first polls of Arizona voters since President Joe Biden's replacement on the ballot by Vice President Kamala Harris shows a very tight race between her and former President Donald Trump.
A report from Noble Predictive Insights shows that the presidential race will be incredibly close in the swing state of Arizona, with the exact marginal difference between Trump and Harris as there was between Trump and Biden prior to the change in Democratic candidate – 3%.
“Despite Trump maintaining a narrow lead, the entry of Harris into the race has significantly shifted voter dynamics, particularly among key demographic groups,” reads the report. “When Trump was running against Joe Biden, Trump benefited from the presence of third-party candidates. Young, non-White Democrats and others who had doubts about Biden’s fitness for office chose third-party candidates, which pushed Biden’s vote share down and increased Trump’s lead.”
However, the report indicates that since Harris’ entrance into the race, many undecided Democrats voters have leaned her way instead of other third-party candidates.
“According to the August AZPOP, Trump holds a slim 3-point lead over Harris, with 47% of voters backing him compared to Harris’s 44%, maintaining the same leading margin from May, when Trump led by 3 points (44% to Biden’s 41%),” reads the report. “Notably, the percentage of undecided voters has dropped from 15% in May to just 9% in August, indicating that Harris’s candidacy has pushed more voters to make a decision.”
The report states that Harris is not only attracting “wayward Democrats,” but independents as well by appealing to demographics that were key for Trump – independents, Hispanics and younger voters.
Nonetheless, David Byler, DPI chief of research, said that no matter the candidates, this is still a race between Democrats and Republicans, based on their foundational party priorities.
"One party switched their candidate, but this is still a Republican vs Democrat race,” Byler said. "Trump has retained his strength on immigration – his signature issue – and is capitalizing on negative feelings about the Biden economy. He’ll likely double down on immigration since Harris led the Biden Administration’s efforts on that issue. Harris is hammering Trump on abortion, a weakness for the GOP since Dobbs, and climate change. If it was still Biden vs Trump, they’d be fighting about many of these same issues.”
Mike Noble, NPI founder and CEO, said that Harris is in a better position to rally Democrats than Biden is, taking the question of age off the table, with the report indicating that 80% of voters thought Biden stepping down was the right decision.
"Trump’s ‘they forced Biden out’ attack on the Democrats’ nominating process isn’t going to land. The decision for Biden to step aside seems to have been a non-issue for most voters across parties," Noble said. “Democrats are happy with Harris as their nominee and Walz as her VP pick. This all bodes well for Harris, who can focus on rallying support without the baggage of intra-party drama."
With the polls so close in Arizona, the leading candidate in the battleground state has yet to be seen.
“As the 2024 Presidential race heats up, Arizona remains a battleground with no clear victor in sight,” reads the report. “This AZPOP lines up with the broad consensus of many other polls that have Trump and Harris roughly tied, and is what we’d expect to see in a swing state like Arizona. Both Trump and Harris have solidified their bases, but the key to victory will lie in swaying the undecided voters and focusing on the issues that matter most to Arizonans.”
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