While the vast majority of congressional seats are not in play this fall due to partisan apportionments, a number are considered battlegrounds nonetheless.
And in those districts, spread across Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington, the race is tight at the top of the ticket and in the battle for control of the House.
Not even 1 percentage point separates Kamala Harris (48%) and Donald Trump (47.3%) in head-to-head polling of 1,503 likely general-election voters Cygnal conducted in those districts Sept. 11 through 13 — and shared early with The Post.
Yet Brock McCleary, vice president of polling, says the metrics are overall encouraging for Trump and potentially troubling for Democrats down the stretch.
“While Harris enjoys a post-debate bump across these battlegrounds, Trump’s numbers have remained stable since March. The biggest delta in this data is the job approval of Trump’s time in office versus the current Biden-Harris administration. This provides a clear path for Trump to win by contrasting how voters felt about their circumstances, and the direction of the country, when he was at the helm,” McCleary told The Post exclusively Tuesday.
Indeed, Trump’s favorability may be slightly underwater, with 46% approval and 53% disapproval overall. But he’s still more liked than Biden (41% approval, 57% disapproval).
Yet while Harris has 49% approval and 50% disapproval, showing a remarkable reversal from July’s 56% approval and 37% disapproval, McCleary believes that trend merely “demonstrates how severely Americans were rejecting Joe Biden in July, not that they adore Harris in September.”
“The data shows Trump voters like and support him more as a candidate than do Harris voters. If Trump can sustain his narrow advantage and down-ballot Republicans can weather September’s disparity in negative advertising, Republicans can close strong in October,” McCleary adds.
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One salient data point supporting this read: By a more than two-to-one margin (65% to 30%), these battleground voters say America is on the wrong track rather than the right track.
The poll also shows Democrats seem to have momentum on their side in their attempt to wrest control of the House of Representatives away from the GOP, but caveats are in play here even as the generic congressional ballot in these 38 swing seats has shifted from an R+3 advantage earlier this summer to a D+1 edge today.
All told, 21 of these seats are filled by Republicans for re-election, with an additional 15 held by Democrats and three more of them open.
Women under the age of 44 are a big reason, as 60% of them say they would vote for a generic Democrat (up 10 points from the previous poll) and 27% say they would pick a generic Republican in the ballot test, which elided specific candidate pairings in the polling.
Women who graduated college are particularly receptive to a generic Democrat in Congress, with 65% of them stating that preference against just 30% saying the same about a generic Republican.
