More polling suggests the presidential race in Pennsylvania will be every bit as close as it was in 2016, when Donald Trump won, and in 2020, when he lost.
But a key piece of data points to a flaw in the model and potential attrition that could hamper Kamala Harris’ hopes to pick up 19 electoral votes and score a promotion when votes are counted next week.
The Suffolk University-USA Today survey of 500 likely voters shows the race couldn’t be tighter. Harris and Trump both pick up exactly 243 voters each; with rounding, they’re tied at 49%. Nine voters refused to answer or claimed to be undecided, and five voters were split among Green Party nominee Jill Stein and Libertarian hopeful Chase Oliver.
But the pollsters appear to have oversampled Biden voters from four years ago, raising questions about how close the race actually is given that Scranton Joe only ended up with a 1.17-point win.
While 49% of all respondents say they backed Biden (a number close enough to the 50% who voted for him last cycle), just 43% say they supported Trump in 2020. Three percent of alleged likely voters this cycle didn’t vote last time around, while 2% went third party, and 1% refused to answer.
Whether the numbers were massaged in a “herding” scenario pollsters use to not get too far away from consensus in a final survey — something polling guru Nate Silver just railed against in a podcast — is an open question.
But various pro-Trump trends are not open to question in the crosstabs even with the sample’s heavy lean away from GOP voters last cycle.
Harris only has 88% of the Democratic vote. Eight percent say they’re voting for Trump, and 2% are undecided or refused to answer the question.
In contrast, Trump has consolidated the GOP base in this sample, with 93% support within his own party. Harris takes 6%, while Stein — called an anti-Harris spoiler by Democrats — actually siphons off 1% of the Republican share.
Trump dominates with independent voters, leading 51% to 43%, with Oliver at 3% and 4% refusing to answer or undecided.
The polling also suggests comedian Kill Tony’s ill-considered remark at a recent Trump rally about Puerto Rico hasn’t hurt with Hispanics that much, even though Harris leads 52% to 48%.
Trump is also performing reasonably well with black voters, taking 17% to 78% for Harris, with 5% undecided or not answering the question.
While the data don’t segment black or Hispanic voters by gender, the gap between male and female voters is pronounced here: 60% of men back Trump, while 57% of women support Harris.
Another significant division — and potentially the most important of all in the end — is when people vote.
Harris leads 69% to 30% with people who had already voted when the poll was in the field (Oct. 27 through Oct. 30). Trump is up 69% to 25% with those who had yet to vote when they were surveyed.
Women and elderly Democrats have outpaced men and GOP senior citizens thus far, driving that trend. Voters over the age of 65 have been the majority up until this point. Roughly five of every eight votes cast by a member of the major parties have been Democratic votes.
