Several polls from the key battleground state of Pennsylvania show Kamala Harris trailing her opponent Donald Trump with less than a week until the election.
Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral votes, is crucial to securing a victory in November. The country has chosen an overall winner in 48 of the last 59 elections.
Polls show a tight race between Harris and Trump but give the former president a slight edge of between one and three points.
For example, the latest Fox News poll, conducted between October 24 and 28, shows that Trump has a 1-point edge over Harris in a head-to-head matchup among voters.
Jacquelyn Martin / AP
Harris and Trump are tied among likely voters in expanded voting at 48 percent each. In September, Trump had a 1-point lead over Harris in the extended polls.
Among registered voters, however, Harris is up 2 points in two expanded ballots and two-way head-to-head. All results between registered and likely voters are within the margin of error.
Another poll, conducted by Monmouth University at the same time, showed Trump by 1 point among voters, with 47 percent to Harris’ 46 percent — a lead within the margin of error. In the most recent Quinnipiac University poll, also conducted between October 24 and 28, Trump is ahead by 2 points in the two-way race and 1 point in the expanded vote. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.1 percentage points.
The latest poll by AtlasIntel, conducted between October 25 and 29, shows a better result for Trump, putting him 3 points ahead in the head-to-head match and 2 points ahead in the expanded ballot. However, his lead is still within the survey’s margin of error of ± 3 points. Newsweek have contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment.
Although Trump’s lead is small, the latest polls are bad news for the Harris campaign, which is trailing Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania, according to some poll trackers.
Harris previously held the lead in the Keystone State after becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, but over the past two weeks, Trump has taken the lead, according to poll tracker FiveThirtyEight, putting him ahead by 0.4 points and suggesting he will win the state.
Pollster tracker Nate Silver also shows Trump ahead by a 0.6-point margin in Pennsylvania, while RealClearPolitics shows him ahead by 0.8 points.
But despite Trump’s marginal lead, there is still hope for Harris in the country after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remarks at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday sparked criticism and dominated headlines.
At the rally, Hinchcliffe joked that Puerto Rico was a “floating island of garbage.” When Trump campaign adviser Danielle Alvarez clarified that Hinchcliffe’s controversial comments “do not reflect the views of President Trump or his campaign,” the joke went down well. The attack could hurt Trump especially in Pennsylvania – the swing state with the highest percentage of Puerto Ricans, who make up 3.7 percent of the population. In 2020, Biden narrowly won by 1.2 points after Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016.
On the same day as Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the vice president was in Allentown in Pennsylvania. Harris used her visit to release a video about her plans for Puerto Rico, which Puerto Rican music icon Bad Bunny shared on her Instagram account.
Early voting data from Pennsylvania shows that more Democrats than Republicans voted in the state, with registered Democrats making up 57 percent of early voters, compared to 32 percent for Republicans, according to the University of Florida’s early voting tracker. However, it’s unclear what the election means because early voting data only shows whether voters registered with a party, not who they voted for.
Trump’s strength in Pennsylvania lies in the state’s white, working-class population, a demographic that makes up nearly 75 percent of the state and typically leans Republican. This can provide a critical advantage during elections
