Follow the latest updates on Trump, Harris, and the 2024 election.
Voters now see Vice President Kamala Harris as more representative of change than Donald J. Trump, as Harris holds a narrow national lead in the White House race, according to the latest New York Times report. They are more likely to rate the country as being considerate of people like them. /Siena College Poll.
The results are the first time Harris has led Trump in the Times/Siena poll since July, when President Biden withdrew from the race and Democrats rallied behind Harris to replace her. It comes as the contest enters its final month, and a survey of battleground states finds the race to be one of the closest in modern history.
While the Times-Siena poll shows Mr. Trump with a moderately reliable lead, the results show that Ms. Harris has a slight lead, however small, on questions about temperament, trust, and change that could be important in a presidential election. This suggests that there are benefits to be gained from scale.
The poll, conducted among 3,385 likely voters between September 29 and October 6, found Harris leading Republican Trump 49% to 46%, within the poll’s margin of error. It was a small lead.
(A Times-Siena poll found Trump leading in Texas and by a wide margin in Florida. Florida poll reveals what’s going on in the race.) Nate Cohn writes:
Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris were tied at 47% each in a mid-September Times-Siena poll after the candidates met in the first, and perhaps only, presidential debate.
Harris has since strengthened her support among older voters and started gaining ground among Republicans, with 9% saying they plan to support her, up slightly from 5% last month. . He also appears to have narrowed the gap on the issue of change, a key element in an election where voters have repeatedly told pollsters they believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.
The 78-year-old Trump, who was voted out of the White House in 2020, has cast himself as an agent of change and has regularly tried to shift unpopular aspects of Biden’s record onto Harris. It’s here. But voters say Harris is the candidate who represents change in this election, 46% to 44%, according to a Times-Siena poll. This discovery was a first for Harris. Previous Times/Siena polls had cast Trump as the candidate for change.
Harris, 59, is seen as the replacement candidate among nonwhite voters by a wide margin of 61% to 29%. Younger voters see her as a candidate to change the government, by a lopsided margin of 58% to 34%.
“The age difference between the two candidates makes a big difference in change,” said Memphis Democrat Darry Knox, 58, who plans to vote for Harris. “They see the world differently. They see the world differently and have different views about the world.”
Mr. Trump maintains a strong leader’s advantage, albeit by a narrow margin, and that could prove decisive in the turbulent Middle East.
But Ms. Harris was seen as far more honest and trustworthy than Mr. Trump. And Harris’ campaign has promoted videos and memes that show her laughing, joking and dancing, which was considered the funnier of the two candidates. The poll found that 43% of likely voters and 13% of Republicans think Harris is more interesting.
But Mr. Trump has some clear advantages. He has an 11 point lead among male voters. Additionally, 42% of respondents said Trump’s policies were personally helpful, compared to 22% who said the same about Biden’s policies.
More voters said they trusted Trump than Harris when it came to managing the economy, which remains the top area of concern. (Abortion and immigration were a distant second.) The domestic economic situation remains weak, with 75% of respondents saying the economy is in good or bad shape, the same as last month. Ta. Almost three-quarters of respondents also said they had sometimes reduced their grocery purchases in the past year because of cost.
“As a businessman, Mr. Trump can look at the big picture and say, ‘Oh, maybe we can do this to help people,'” said Barbara Storacina, 65, a former school administrator in Canton, Ohio. I think so,” he said. “Democrats and Harris, on the other hand, don’t seem to care about ordinary people like me. They don’t care if we’re struggling or if we need help with something. I won’t.”
But Harris also made some progress on the key question of who voters trust to handle the issues that matter most. Trump’s lead on this question was only 2 points, 48% to 46%, compared to 5 points in September. .
“I don’t trust Donald Trump,” said Lance Johnson, a 54-year-old construction manager from Houston, who said he was affiliated with no political party and planned to vote for Harris. “He’s about to become president, and I think he might want to be president for his own benefit.”
Amid widespread economic concerns, Harris is seen as more likely to “help people like you” (48% vs. 43%). She was a little closer when it came to who voters said they would personally support.
National polls are a great barometer of voters’ moods and attitudes. However, these numbers do not necessarily represent the Electoral College result, and will be determined by swing states with extremely close vote counts, such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In a sign of how rapidly the country’s presidential battlegrounds have realigned in recent years, the Times-Siena poll found Trump ahead of 13 in Florida, which until recently was considered a strong contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. It turned out that they had a points lead and a 6 point lead. Texas is a state that Democrats have long wanted to turn blue.
But nationally, the race remains close and surprisingly static. The percentage of voters who have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of both candidates has remained unchanged since September. The undecided or persuadable group of voters made up 17% of voters, down slightly from 20% in early September. When asked which candidate they supported, opinions were divided. This group was leaning slightly toward Trump in early September.
Elizabeth Mera, 64, a Republican from Utah, said she was leaning toward Harris, saying, “I can’t vote for Trump.” “I feel like Kamala is a decent person and would work hard, and I think I could be her friend. I don’t necessarily know if I would agree to all the changes she wants. ”
Christine Zhang contributed to the report.
Here’s what’s important to know about these polls:
The national poll includes separate polls of 622 voters in Florida and 617 voters in Texas. The weight given to each of these groups in national polls is adjusted so that the overall results reflect the country as a whole.
The Times/Siena poll is conducted by phone using live interviewers in both English and Spanish. Overall, approximately 98 percent of respondents in these polls were contacted by cell phone. Here you can see the exact questions asked and their order.
Voters for the survey are selected from a list of registered voters. This list includes information about the demographic characteristics of all registered voters, ensuring that you have the right number of voters for each party, race, and region. In these polls, interviewers made approximately 365,000 phone calls to approximately 150,000 voters.
To further ensure that the results reflect the electorate as a whole, not just those willing to participate in the poll, we looked at underrepresented groups among survey respondents, such as those without a college degree. give more weight to respondents from certain demographic groups. Further information about respondent characteristics and weighted samples can be found under ‘Sample Composition’ at the bottom of the Results and Methodology page.
The margin of sampling error among likely voters is plus or minus 2.4 points for national polls and about plus or minus 5 points for state polls. In theory, this means that the results should most often reflect the opinions of the entire population, but many other challenges create additional sources of error. When the difference between two values is calculated, such as a candidate’s lead in a race, the margin of error is doubled.
Complete results and detailed methodology can be found here. If you’d like to learn more about how and why we conduct surveys, you can find answers to frequently asked questions or submit your own question here.
