The race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is on a knife-edge with six weeks to go before election day — at least in the battle for the national popular vote.
Two new surveys released Tuesday presented mirror images of the electorate, but indicate that the Republican nominee has a narrow edge in the Electoral College.
In a Quinnipiac University poll, Trump led Harris among likely voters, 48%-47%, while a CNN poll showed Harris on top by the same margin with the same cohort.
Both surveys indicate that Trump will become the 47th president, due to recent Democratic candidates’ propensity to rack up big popular vote margins in states like New York and California.
In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percentage points while winning 304 electoral votes.
Four years ago, President Biden defeated Trump with 306 electoral votes, but needed a 4.5 percentage point edge in the popular vote to achieve that tally.
Democrats have won the popular vote in every election but one since 1992. The only exception was 2004, when George W. Bush won 50.7% of the vote in securing a second term.
According to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, Harris leads Trump by 2.1 percentage points nationally — the same margin as Clinton eight years ago.
In the Quinnipiac poll, 70% of Harris supporters called themselves “very enthusiastic” backers of the veep, down from 75% who said the same in August.
Among Trump supporters, 71% said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting for him, up from 68% in August.
“On the backstretch of the race to Election Day, all eyes are on which candidate can best stoke their supporter’s enthusiasm all the way to the finish line,” Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said. “A slight shift suggests the Harris crowd is not roaring as loudly as it was last month.”
Meanwhile, the CNN poll showed four in 10 Harris supporters described their vote as more against Trump than supporting Harris, while nearly three-quarters (72%) of Trump backers said their vote was an expression of support for the former president.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents told Quinnipiac they would like a second debate between Trump and Harris, despite the 45th president ruling out the prospect earlier this month.
Echoing other polls, both surveys found Trump with the advantage over Harris on the key issue of the economy.
Likely voters in the CNN poll had more faith in Trump’s economic stewardship by double digits (50%-39%), while Quinnipiac found 52% favoring Trump on the economy compared to 45% favoring Harris.
On other big issues, voters in the CNN poll favored Trump on immigration (49%-35%) and foreign policy (47%-40%), while Harris got the edge on abortion (52%-31%), unifying the nation (43%-30%) and safeguarding democracy (47%-40%).
Quinnipiac found that voters favor Harris when it comes to nuclear weapons (49%-47%), safeguarding democracy (50%-47%), gun violence (50%-45%) and abortion (54%-41%). Trump emerged as the favorite on immigration (53% to 45%).
The Connecticut-based pollster also found that more voters both thought Trump would be a great president (28%-19%) — and that he would be a terrible president (41%-37%).
The Quinnipiac University Poll sampled 1,728 likely voters Sept. 19-22 with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.4 percentage points.
CNN’s poll was taken by SSRS and sampled 2,074 registered voters over the same dates and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points among both registered and likely voters.
