It’s horse-racey, but it is as good an update on Pennsylvania polls in these closing days of the 2024 presidential campaign as you are going to find. Sara Dorn and Antonio Pequeno write in “Pennsylvania 2024 Trump-Harris Polls: Race Virtually Tied In 6 New Surveys Of Vital Battleground (Updated)” at Forbes:
TOPLINE
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are within one percentage point of each other in a half-dozen new polls of Pennsylvania this week, as the race remains essentially even in the swing state that’s likely to decide the winner of the 2024 election.
KEY FACTS
Trump is up 50%-49% in a two-way Fox News poll of likely Pennsylvania voters out Wednesday—well within the three-point margin of error—while the candidates are tied at 48% if respondents could pick third-party candidates (some 3% of voters chose another candidate).
Trump also has a 47%-46% lead in a Quinnipiac poll of likely voters published Wednesday (margin of error 2.1 points, and respondents could choose other candidates), though Harris holds a narrow 49%-48% edge in a Cooperative Election Study poll released this week (3,685 respondents, polled as part of a national study by universities conducted by YouGov).
Meanwhile, the race is dead even at 48%-48% in a CNN/SSRS poll of likely voters out Wednesday—while only 8% said they’re undecided or may change their minds—and CBS/YouGov found a similar 49%-49% tie in a likely voter poll released Tuesday.
Turnout could play a role: Trump had 47%-46% lead in a Monmouth poll of all registered voters published Wednesday, but the race is tied at 48%-48% among respondents who are extremely motivated to vote, and Harris leads 48%-47% among people who have voted in most or all general elections since 2014 (margin of error 3.8 points).
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 0.4 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 statistician Nate 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.
SURPRISING FACT
Dorn and Pequeno note that “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.” Read the entire article right here.
