Polls show Trump-Harris deadlocked nationally while key states tilt Republican

Rivals enter final weeks with races slipping towards GOP at the state level

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump remain locked in a tight race in the final month of the 2024 election, according to a new batch of national polls out on Sunday.

But the race may be slipping away from her in swing states as her “honeymoon” period following a late entry in the race ends, and her campaign’s messaging strategy pivots away from the aggressive push against MAGA Republicans’ views on women and the attacks on Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.

The vice president and her opponent were tied in a new NBC News national poll of likely voters, both sitting at 48%. In a CBS poll, Harris was ahead by one point nationally, 51%-50%, and behind 49%-48% in a consolidation of battleground states; both results well within the margin of error. And in an ABC News poll of registered voters, Harris was ahead 49%-47%.

The polls hint at the same picture which a slew of swing-state voter surveys drew this past week: Harris likely remains in a slight lead among all voters nationwide, but is seeing key battleground states apparently in danger of falling into Donald Trump’s grasp.

Sunday’s batch of national polls follows releases from several polling outfits this past week. A new Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan this week showed him leading in the latter two; RealClearPolitics’s polling average now has him ahead for the first time in months in the state of Michigan, a state which spurned Hillary Clinton in 2016 but flipped back to Democratic control in 2020.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump enter the last few weeks of the election deadlocked nationally but with individual swing states trending in Trump’s favor, according to a series of new polls (AP)

The issue-based polling in the three surveys released on Sunday was a series of warning flags for the vice president on its own. CBS’s poll found wide disparities between supporters of the two candidates regarding whether the Biden-Harris administration was steering hurricane relief away from conservative areas of the country in the wake of damage wrought by storms Helene and Milton.

ABC’s, meanwhile, revealed that almost twice as many Americans believe the state of the economy is getting worse than believe it is getting better. It also showed the extent of the Democratic Party’s failure to articulate a positive and effective immigration policy, with voters now more likely to support large-scale deportation plans.

But none of the swing state polls — even the ones that have projected real movement in Donald Trump’s favor, or vice versa — are showing too many major battleground states seriously out of range for either candidate. That has expanded the map both candidates are traversing, along with their assorted surrogates, in the final month of the race.

Among those states now suddenly in deep contention is North Carolina, where top Trump and Harris surrogates have been campaigning for weeks. JD Vance is set to visit the state on Wednesday. Harris rallied there on Sunday, at Eastern Carolina University.

The Harris campaign, meanwhile, is deploying Tim Walz to Wisconsin and western Pennsylvania to shore up support from voters there.

With the polls still deadlocked nationally, a key factor to observe over the next few weeks will be whether Harris can transform her sizable cash advantage into a tangible lead in the polls, or on Election Day itself. The Harris campaign has continuously outraised the former president, and quadrupled his fundraising totals in August. The Trump campaign has not been shy in terms of spending its own cash, though the former president’s ability to match Harris’s burn rate in the next few weeks may falter.