Harris Reclaims Slight Lead Nationwide, But Electoral College Comes Ahead: POLL

Vice President Kamala Harris has regained a slight lead among likely voters nationwide in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, although the race is close enough to leave the outcome of the 2024 presidential election up to Electoral College uncertainties.

Voter turnout is key. Only 2 percentage points separate Harris and Donald Trump among all registered voters, 49-47%. This translates to a slight Harris advantage among likely voters, 51-47%, with some pro-Harris groups showing slightly greater propensity to vote.

Compared to earlier this month, Harris has regained a more usual Democratic lead among Hispanics and expanded her lead among suburban women while remaining strong among core groups, including blacks. Trump is making inroads in rural areas and among white men out of college, and is running competitively among younger men.

The complete results can be found in the PDF.

problems

The candidates share the cake with confidence to resolve top issues. Trump's best records include immigration, with a 12-point lead over Harris among registered voters; the economy as a whole, +8 points; Inflation, +7; and the conflict in the Middle East, also +7. Harris responds with double-digit leads in trust management on abortion (+15) and health care (+10); She also has an 8-point lead in “protecting American democracy” and a +6-point lead in supporting the middle class.

The economy and inflation remain major concerns, with 90% and 85% of registered voters, respectively, citing them as extremely important to their vote. But this poll, conducted by Langer Research Associates for ABC and with field research from Ipsos, finds a shift in intensity: stocks placing top priority on the economy or inflation, citing it as “one of the single most important issues” in their vote “, have done so by 7 points each since September.

Any shift away from economic concerns would likely help Harris, as she lacks confidence in tackling the issue and is dissatisfied with the Biden administration's economic performance. President Joe Biden has just a 36% approval rating; Differentiating himself from him was a challenge for Harris. Among registered voters who approve of Biden's job performance, she receives 95% support, compared to 16% among the majority who disapprove.

It is also noteworthy that protecting democracy is almost as important as inflation, with 81% of those surveyed. That far exceeds the importance of immigration, which has hit Trump hard, and abortion, which is a key issue for Harris. But these reflect partisan reality: Democrats are far more inclined than others to choose abortion as a top issue; Republicans to vote immigration.

Attributes

While they argue over issues, Harris continues to lead Trump on most personal issues. In a head-to-head comparison, Harris leads Trump by 11 points (49-38%) as he is credited with having the mental acuity needed to serve effectively as president – a measure by which Trump edged Biden by 31 points .

Harris' lead expands to 29 points as he has the physicality to serve effectively. She is also more likely to be viewed as honest and trustworthy than Trump (by 15 points); understanding the problems of people like you, by 10 points; and share your personal values ​​by 8 points.

However, there is another personal quality on which Trump is essentially tied with Harris and which can be important in an unstable world: confidence in a crisis. 43 percent choose Harris, 41 percent choose Trump.

These are not the only different views on the candidates' characteristics. As reported Friday, registered voters are twice as likely to call Trump a fascist as they are to say that about Harris, and 16 percent more likely to say he frequently says things that aren't true. But they are also 5 points more likely to believe that Harris, not Trump, is making proposals just to win votes, rather than that she has any intention of implementing them.

Voter groups

Eight percent of adults (and 10 percent of registered voters) say they have already voted (as of early last week); a disproportionately Democratic group, they voted for Harris 62-33%.

This poll shows a notable shift in voting preferences among the Hispanic population, which makes up 12% of likely voters and is a potentially important group given the close competition, particularly in the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada. According to the ABC News exit poll, Biden won Hispanics by 33 points in 2020, and Harris now leads that group by a similar 30 points, 64-34% – compared to 55-43% in early October.

Trump has some advantages for Harris' gain among the Hispanic population. He is now +41 points among white men without a college degree, essentially matching his performance among that group in the 2020 ABC News exit poll, and also +41 points among rural voters.

Additionally, men under 40 received +6 points for Harris earlier this month; Now it's +5 for Trump. This change is not statistically significant, nor is the difference between candidates given the sample size. Still, the result stands in stark contrast to the preferences of women under 40, who favor Harris by a 34-point margin.

Trump is a slight +6 among men overall, Harris is +14 among women – almost exactly the average gender gap in presidential elections since 1996. That includes a 19-point lead for Harris among suburban women versus a slight 10-point lead for She was in this group at the beginning of October.

The long-standing gender gap in presidential preference reflects the fact that women are more likely than men to be Democrats — in this poll, the figure among likely voters is 13 points. This is also reflected in the importance of the issue, as women are double-digit more likely than men to choose both abortion and health care as key issues in their vote.

Many of these group results are similar to those in the 2020 election poll. In one difference, Harris outperforms Biden four years ago among college-educated white women. It is also strongly represented among university graduates as a whole.

But another difference is important for Trump: Among independents, he is essentially tied with Harris, a group Biden won by 13 points in 2020, while Harris is now at just +1 point. The candidate who won the independents has won nine of the last twelve presidential elections.

Turn out

Overall voter preferences are essentially the same among the total population (Harris +1) and registered voters (Harris +2). As noted, this represents a slight Harris +4 among likely voters.

The shift toward Harris among likely voters rests in part on consolidated support among Democratic grassroots groups, particularly blacks and liberals. While Harris has a 70-point lead among all blacks, that increases to 83 points among likely black voters, or 90-7%. 96 percent of likely liberal voters support Harris, compared to 91 percent of liberals overall. Additionally, her approval rating rises from 53% among all suburban women to 59% among those likely to vote. In contrast, Trump is not seeing significant gains in support among likely voters.

Identifying likely voters requires estimates and can be a moving target as campaigns work overtime to motivate turnout for their candidate and demotivate them for their opponent.

One possible indicator of turnout is that the candidates are close in terms of voter enthusiasm – 88% of Harris supporters are enthusiastic about her, as are 85% of Trump supporters about him. In another case, Harris maintains a slight lead in voter contact, with Americans overall 5 points more likely to have been contacted by her campaign than by Trump's. In the seven battleground states, however, it's an insignificant 4 points – and the 50-47 percent race there remains tantamount to a dead heat.

methodology

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online October 18-22, 2024 via the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® in English and Spanish among a random national sample of 2,808 adults, including 2,392 registered voters and 1,913 likely voters. The partisan divide among all adults is 29-29-30%, Democrat-Republican-Independent; 32-32-29% among registered voters; and 35-35-27% among likely voters.

The results have a margin of sampling error of 2 percentage points, including the design effect, for the entire sample and for registered voters, 2.5 points for likely voters and 5.5 points for likely voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Sampling error is not the only cause of differences in surveys.

The survey was created for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Ipsos. Details of ABC News' polling methodology can be found here.