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A poll released Thursday shows Vice President Kamala Harris holding a narrow lead over Donald Trump in the national race, but with a margin half the size of President Joe Biden's in 2020.
An Emerson College Polling survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted between September 29 and October 1, found Harris holding a slight 2-point lead over Trump, with 50 percent support compared to Trump's 48 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, making the race nearly a statistical tie.
However, the lead is half as much as "Biden's 4-point lead in Emerson 2020 national polls at this time," Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling said.
Newsweek reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment via email on Thursday.
FiveThirtyEight's national polling average shows an even bigger drop, with Harris holding roughly a third of Biden's lead against the Republican opponent at this point in 2020. As of October 3, the aggregate shows Harris with a 2.8-point advantage, compared to Biden's 7.4-point lead on the same date in 2020.
Another polling aggregator, RealClearPolitics, found an even larger gap between Biden's 7.8-point lead in 2020 and Harris' 2.2-point lead now—a full point lower than Hillary Clinton's 3.2-point lead in 2016.
Biden won the 2020 election against Trump, securing 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232. He also captured more than 50 percent of the popular vote. However, winning the popular vote alone does not determine the presidency, as was the case in Clinton's 2016 run, rather, securing 270 or more Electoral College votes does.
The 2020 presidential race ultimately hinged on tens of thousands of votes in several battleground states, which are expected to be even more competitive this time around and have the power to swing the election.
Aggregate polls show the races in North Carolina and Pennsylvania as nearly deadlocked, with Trump holding a small lead in Arizona and Georgia and Harris maintaining a narrow edge in Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin. The candidates are each drawing between 48 and 50 percent in those states, making the contests extraordinarily tight and constantly fluctuating.
In terms of candidate favorability, an Emerson College Polling survey found that 50 percent of voters have a favorable view of Harris, while the other 50 percent view her unfavorably. Trump trails by 1 percentage point, with 49 percent viewing him favorably and 51 percent unfavorably.
A clear majority of voters—41 percent—say the economy is the top issue for them this election, followed by immigration at 17 percent. Both Harris and Trump have made the two top issues focal points of their respective campaigns.
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About the writer
Mandy Taheri is a Newsweek reporter based in Brooklyn. She joined Newsweek as a reporter in 2024. You can get ... Read more