The Next-to-Leading Rankings of the National Preferential Reporter (NPR) Observatories. I. The Race from Election Day to Election Night
Why are they so important? Trump would get to exactly 270 with these two states and the other states currently leaning in his favor — without having to win North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin or Michigan.
Georgia and Pennsylvania are seen by the Trump campaign as places it needs to win. Look at its ad spending. According to data from Ad Impact, Donald Trump and his allies have spent about 70% of their ad money in Pennsylvania and Georgia since Super Tuesday.
Black voters get the biggest boost from Harris. She has gone from a 23 point lead with Black voters to a 54 point lead now, thanks to many voters moving into the undecided camp. Harris is moving closer to where Democrats have to win over Black voters.
Changes between now and November 5 will be reflected in the NPR maps. This analysis is meant to give a rough overview of where the race is currently at, but not necessarily where it will be at the end.
NPR’s analysis is based on surveys aggregated by FiveThirtyEight and The Hill. If a candidate had an average lead in both aggregators of 1 point or more, as of Friday afternoon, it is colored a shade of red for Trump or blue for Harris. If it was less than that, it’s yellow for “Toss Up.”
This analysis is not just based on polling. It’s also informed by reporting from the field, conversations with campaigns and also considers the history of how states have voted in the past. The map is strictly based on polling. That shows a slightly closer 268-241 Trump lead.
Harris is now winning independents, something Biden wasn’t doing. Harris is up 9 points with independents (53%-44%). She dropped 14 points last month with them. In early July, Trump was beating Biden by more than 20 points. That is a huge change.
Since President Biden dropped out of the presidential race and the Democrats coalesced around Vice President Harris, the political world has changed.
But there’s now a 22-point gender gap, which is wider than the margin between Trump and Biden in July. Harris now leads by 13 points with women (55%-42%), but is losing men by 9 points (54%-45%). The exit polls show those are within striking distance of the results of the 2020 presidential election.
She is being propelled by black voters, white women with college degrees and women who identify as political independents. She is doing 20 to 30 points better with them than when she first got in, leading to improvement in the suburbs and with white voters overall.
On the issues, the negative views of the economy are not sticking to Harris the way they did Biden. Trump is still more trusted on the economy, but only by 3 points over Harris (51%-48%), compared to 9 points over Biden (54%-45%) in June.
Harris picked Walz as her vice-presidential running mate before the survey was conducted. The research panels in English and Spanish were used by Marist to interview 1,613 adults. The survey’s margin of error is 3.3 percentage points, meaning the results could be higher or lower.
Latinos have also moved in Harris’ favor. Fifty-eight percent say they’d vote for her now, compared to just 49 percent a month ago. That’s still below the 65% Biden won in 2020.
Biden was seeing double-digit drop offs with Gen Z/Millennials, for example. Harris’ margin expands when respondents have a choice of candidates other than the two major-party picks.
That is closer to being on par with white voters in previous surveys, since it is up to 81% with African-Americans, 84% with Latinos and 80% with Gen Z/Millennials.
All of the third-party candidates are seeing their worst scores since Marist started asking about them in April. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running as an independent, is down to just 5%. West also runs as an independent and the Green Party candidate, Stein, and the Libertarian Oliver all poll at or below 1%.
What Makes a Democrat Dissatisfied With Their Choices? Insights from Quarterly-Recent Voter Surveys
The people say they’re more satisfied with their choices than the other way around, with half saying they’re not. In June, there was a 10-point difference between people satisfied (42%) and those who were dissatisfied with their choices (52%).
While trustworthiness was the most important quality for Democrats and independent voters, a plurality of Republicans said a “strong leader” was most important to them.
Democrats traditionally need a wider advantage in that score to make significant gains – in 2022, when they denied Republicans from winning a wave of House seats, they had a 4-point edge in the Marist poll; in 2020, it was 8, but Democrats lost House seats; they were +6 in 2018 and made significant gains, however; in 2014, when Republicans won seats, Republicans were +5 on the question.
The congressional ballot and seat change don’t always correlate well with the most competitive seats being in that cycle. Democrats have an advantage in presidential years because of higher turnout among core voter groups in certain areas, such as suburban areas in New York, California and Philadelphia.