With Election Day now just over a week away, the final major polls are starting to come in. As has been the case in the final months, weeks, and now days of this election cycle, it looks to be a close race, though some polls show a closer one than others between former and potentially future President Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
On Sunday, the ABC News/Ipsos poll was released, showing Harris leading by +4 over Trump, with 51-47 percent support among likely voters. This lead is outside the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
This poll tends to be favorable toward Harris, and the poll from earlier this month also showed her leading. Harris is also shown with an edge among Independents, 48-47 percent, and with a lead in the seven battleground states, 50-47 percent.
Regarding Independents, though, the ABC News exit poll from 2020 had President Joe Biden winning the demographic by +13. RealClearPolling also has Trump leading by +0.9 overall in the battleground states.
🇺🇲 National Poll: ABC News/Ipsos
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) October 27, 2024
🟦 Harris: 51% (+4)
🟥 Trump: 47%
Last poll (10/8) - 🔵 Harris +2
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Crosstabs
• Men: Trump 51-45%
• Women: Harris 56-42%
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• Independents: Harris 48-47%
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• 7 Battleground States: Harris 50-47%
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• White: Trump 54-43%
• Black:… pic.twitter.com/fWFEnL3wyi
Ian Sams, a Harris spokesperson and senior adviser who has been cherry picking his favorite parts of polls lately, also focused on Harris' support among black men and Hispanic men compared to those ABC News exit polls from 2020 when Trump faced Biden.
This current poll shows Harris winning an overwhelming majority of black men against Trump, and also winning by +27 among Hispanic men.
New ABC poll shows Harris *outperforming* Biden among Black and Latino men
— Ian Sams (@IanSams) October 27, 2024
BLACK MEN
Harris +74 (‘20 exit poll: Biden +60)
LATINO MEN
Harris +27 (‘20: Biden +23)
cc: the narrative pic.twitter.com/zel8IEw4iQ
Pew Research shows that the Biden-Harris ticket won black men by 87-12 percent in 2020, and Hispanic men by 57-40 percent.
Harris has been pandering to black men, including through policy proposals based on race, though she's had to walk back the exclusivity due to concerns about their unconstitutional nature. Former President Barack Obama earlier this month on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania also tried to shame black men into voting for Harris, while former First Lady Michelle Obama more recently expressed her disappointment while campaigning for Harris over the weekend.
It's also a possibility that this ABC News poll is an outlier, especially as other polls have suggested that Harris is underperforming, thus awakening fears in the Obamas and the Democratic elite as a whole.
Last week, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll showed Trump actually leading with Hispanic likely voters by 49-38 percent. Harris led black likely voters by 72-17 percent, faring worse than Democrats typically do with the demographic.
A poll before that, from NBC/Telemundo, showed Harris with a lead among Hispanics over Trump, by 54-40 percent, but it still wasn't where past winning Democratic candidates have been. When broken down further, the poll showed that Hispanic men under 50 actually favor Trump by 51-42 percent.
There's also the NAACP poll from last month showing Harris with just 63 percent support among black voters, and just 49 percent with black men under 50.
Regarding other demographics, the poll's own findings and comparisons from the exit poll show Harris underperforming the ticket from 2020. Harris is overall underperforming with Hispanic voters when it comes to how the Biden-Harris ticket did in 2020, with +30 over Trump compared to +33. Harris also looks to be underperforming with Hispanic women, with +32 support over Trump, compared to +39. Among young voters, Harris is only up by +14 among those ages 18-29, but they favored Biden by +24 in 2020.
Trump is also outperforming his numbers from 2020 with non-college graduates, by +11 versus +2 against Biden.
Bringing this back to men, Trump is up by +5 with those 18-39, while Biden had led by +3 in 2020.
Some other noteworthy and at times questionable findings include how Harris voters are said to be more likely to turn out than Trump voters. That seems a bit suspect, given the momentum appearing to be on Trump's side, and also how even Harris' fellow Democrats are despairing ahead of Election Day.
theyve said this elsewhere as well
— Michael Malice (@michaelmalice) October 27, 2024
they could be right but all the evidence ive seen points to the contrary pic.twitter.com/ypHzF3kItR
Even the ABC News poll has some good news for Trump, though. Among the nine issues that voters were asked about, they trust Trump more to better handle five of them. This includes the top two issues of the economy and inflation, where Trump leads Harris by +8 and +7. Ninety percent of voters say the economy is "highly important," while 85 percent similarly say so about inflation.
Trump also leads by +4 on crime and safety, which 75 percent of voters say is "highly important," and has his biggest lead of +12 over Harris on "the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border," which 69 percent of voters say is "highly important." It's worth mentioning that other polls show immigration to be regarded as a more important issue, though. Trump also leads Harris by +7 on "the conflict in the Middle East." The Republican nominee has certainly been touting support from Muslim and Arab voters lately, as he aims for peace, just as had been the case during his first term, in contrast to the foreign policy crises worsening under the Biden-Harris administration, especially but not limited to the Middle East.
While the poll's results were a trending topic on X over the weekend, many expressed skepticism over trusting such a poll, and ABC News' own headline looks to temper expectations. "Harris regains slight lead nationally yet Electoral College holds the cards: POLL," it read.
That being said, Trump could very well be on his way to winning the popular vote, as CNN's Harry Enten warned viewers last week with recent polls, including a poll from The New York Times/Siena College showing Trump and Harris tied in a head to head matchup.
The poll was conducted October 18-22.
During Sunday's episode of "This Week," also on ABC News, Rick Klein, who serves as the political director and Washington bureau chief, pointed out, "If you look at the FiveThirtyEight battleground state polling, you see some momentum for Trump in some of the key battlegrounds."
Speaking of the specific ABC News poll, Klein noted that "51-47 is not a safe lead," and highlighted, "In fact, it narrows even tighter if you add in third-party candidates, you add in the battleground state polls." He also acknowledged his isn't the only poll out there, adding, "Other polling out in the last couple days has this even. Maybe Trump up a point or two, or Harris up a point or two."
Klein also referenced how issues play a role in the election. "Trump's top issues continue to dominate so much of the conversation. We're seeing in our poll him as viewed as better equipped to handle the economy, better equipped to handle immigration and the border, but we are seeing fewer voters cite inflation as a top issue. It may be Harris breaking through a bit on that messaging," he offered, which does seem rather suspect at best.
"This is as tight a race as we've seen, and as unpredictable a race as I've ever covered," he would go on to tell host Jonathan Karl.
“It is basically a toss-up … We truly don’t know who is going to win on election night.”
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 27, 2024
Nine days to go, @RickKlein is back with The Break Down to go over the latest early voting data and key figures from the ABC News/Ipsos poll.
Read more: https://t.co/YFsgwEvZ9a pic.twitter.com/s4Pk8NJcaS
With such a poll and plenty of others included, RealClearPolling still has Trump up by +0.2. Harris' lead hasn't just dwindled, it's completely gone, with Trump back in the lead, just as he was when Biden was in the race before his fellow Democrats forced him to withdraw.
Harris' lead is down to just +1.4 over Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight.
