The battle for swing states is tied, with Trump ahead on key issues, WSJ poll shows

A survey of the most contested states found Harris with a slight edge in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia when it comes to ballots featuring independent and third-party candidates, where they will be offered as options. Trump has a slight lead in Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. But no lead is larger than 2 percentage points, with the exception of Trump’s 5-point lead in Nevada, which, like the others, is within the poll’s margin of error.

Among the entire group of 4,200 swing state voters, Trump receives 46% support and Harris 45%. The poll shows that the race in every state – and therefore the presidential election – is too close to call. If Harris wins the states where she is leading in the polls, she will win a slim majority in the Electoral College.

The poll also shows that a campaign marked by bitter rhetoric, a change of candidates at the top of the Democratic ticket and two assassination attempts against Trump have pushed Americans into partisan circles, with neither candidate capturing a significant share of the other party’s voters. Former President Trump holds 93% of Republicans in seven states, while Vice President Harris holds 93% of Democrats.

Independent voters are split evenly, with 40% for Harris and 39% for Trump, another factor that makes the contest a contested one in every state.

“This thing is dead and will fall into the wire. These last three weeks matter,” said David Lee, a Republican pollster who worked on the survey with Democrat Michael Bocian.

“It really couldn’t be closer,” Stork said. “It’s a close, tight and hard-fought race.”

The results suggest Harris has a potential path to victory through competitive Sun Belt states, a path that seemed closed with President Biden leading the Democratic Party. Six percentage points more Arizona voters now support Harris than Biden, according to a March poll by the Journal. Her vote share increased by 5 points in Georgia compared to Biden’s results and by 4 points in North Carolina. By contrast, Trump’s share in seven states was little changed from March.

10 percentage points more say Trump than Harris would handle the economy better – the issue voters consider most important when choosing a candidate. By 16 points, voters favor Trump for addressing immigration and border security, which is the No. 2 issue of concern.

These advantages raise the question of why Trump’s leadership on the most pressing issues has not translated into a clear advantage over Harris, despite a sense of pessimism about the direction of the nation and the economy that is usually a warning sign for the party in power in the White House. The study points to several possible causes.

First, voters have varying views on candidates’ leadership in the economy. Harris has an advantage when voters are asked which candidate would best handle certain aspects of Americans’ economic life, such as health care, and has a slight advantage on housing affordability.

Six points more voters say Harris “cares about people like you” than Trump. When voters are asked which one will defend American workers, the two options are essentially a tie.

Views on the economy show that voters distinguish between the state of affairs in the country and in their own country. Nearly two-thirds think the national economy is poor or not very good, and just over one-third rate it as good or excellent. However, when asked about the economy in their home state, a majority of 52% rated it as good or excellent. Half say their personal finances have gone in the wrong direction in the past year, which is slightly more than the 46% who say they have gone in the right direction.

Harris’s clearest advantage is on abortion: by 16 points, voters believe she, not Trump, is better able to handle the issue. About 61% say they want abortion to be legal in all or most cases.

This division may increase voters’ questions about Trump’s leadership style. While Trump has an advantage when voters are asked which candidate has the right experience for the job, 48% of voters also see him as “too extreme” compared to 34% who see Harris as “too extreme.”

These voters may also comment on Trump’s aggressive rhetoric and personal style. “It’s not necessarily about a set of issues, but about the way he leads, governs and conducts himself,” Bocian said.

The outcome of the race will be decided by a small portion of voters who are not firmly convinced of their choice of president. About 16% of voters are considered “persuadable” by pollsters – that is, available to either side, even if they currently lean toward one candidate. That’s down from 32% in March and down from 12% in The Journal’s most recent national survey in August.

More specifically, about 6% of voters are undecided and their views on the candidates are mixed. These voters give Trump higher marks for his performance as president than they give Harris for her performance in office today. However, when asked for his overall opinion of each candidate, Harris comes up with more favorable ratings.

“They dislike Trump more, but they are more accepting of his job performance,” Bocian said, adding that many of these voters are not engaged and will not vote. This means that even a fraction of this share of voters could potentially decide the election.

Bocian said the results reflect the big gains Democrats have made since the Journal conducted a survey of presidential battlegrounds in March. “Trump had a clear lead in all of these states,” he said, “and you had a huge impact on third-party candidates,” who enjoyed 18% and even 20% support in some states. “Now third-party support has all but evaporated, and the race is tied in every state.”

Lee said the results suggested problems for Harris. He emphasized that polling averages from around this time in 2020 showed Biden with a more than 5-point lead in each of the industrial northern swing states, a wider gap than Trump currently faces in any battleground.

While the survey shows voters remain loyal to their party’s candidate, there are signs of erosion among Republicans in favor of Trump in some places. In Arizona, where Harris leads by 2 points, Trump has only 88% of Republicans – 8% behind Harris – while Harris has 96% of Democrats.

This result likely reflects that Republicans like the late Arizona senator John McCain, a Trump opponent, are uncomfortable with the former president and unwilling to support him.

The survey was conducted with live interviewers using mobile and landline phones, and some respondents could be reached via text message and offered the opportunity to take the survey online. The study was conducted from September 28 to October 8. During the study period, North Carolina was hit by Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of the state. Pollsters avoided calling the hardest-hit parts of the state when the storm was having its greatest impact.

The Wall Street Journal poll interviewed 600 registered voters in each of seven states. The margin of error for the full sample of 4,200 people was plus or minus 1.5 percentage points and 4 percentage points for results from any state.

Write to Aaron Zitner at [email protected]