The final NBC News poll of the 2024 presidential campaign has found a neck-and-neck contest between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.
Harris has had a small lead over Trump in the national polling averages since she entered the race at the end of July and she remains ahead.
Harris saw a bounce in her polling numbers in the first few weeks of her campaign, building a lead of nearly four percentage points towards the end of August.
The polls were relatively stable in September and early October but they have tightened in the last couple of weeks, as shown in the chart below, with trend lines showing the averages and dots for individual poll results for each candidate.
While national polls are a useful guide as to how popular a candidate is across the whole country, they’re not the best way to predict the election result.
That’s because the US uses an electoral college system, in which each state is given a number of votes roughly in line with the size of its population. A total of 538 electoral college votes are up for grabs, so a candidate needs to hit 270 to win.
There are 50 states in the US but because most of them nearly always vote for the same party, in reality there are just a handful where both candidates stand a chance of winning. These are the places where the election will be won and lost and are known as battleground states or swing states.
What is the Electoral College and what are the states Harris and Trump need to win?
Who is winning in swing state polls?
Right now the leads in the swing states are so small that it’s impossible to know who is really ahead from looking at the polling averages.
Polls are designed to broadly explain how the public feels about a candidate or an issue, not predict the result of an election by less than a percentage point so it’s important to keep that in mind when looking at the numbers below.
It’s also important to remember that the individual polls used to create these averages have a margin of error of around three to four percentage points, so either candidate could be doing better or worse than the numbers currently suggest.
If you look at the trends since Harris joined the race, it does highlight some differences between the states.
In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the lead has changed hands a few times since the start of August but Trump has a small lead in all of them at the moment.
In the three other states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Harris had led since the start of August, sometimes by two or three points, but the polls have tightened significantly and Trump now has a very small lead in Pennsylvania.
All three of those states had been Democratic strongholds before Trump turned them red on his path to winning the presidency in 2016.
Biden retook them in 2020 and if Harris can do the same then she will be on course to win the election.
An NBC poll showed Harris receiving support from 49% of registered voters, while Trump receives an identical 49%.
The race is characterized by rising Democratic enthusiasm, abortion, and a significant gender gap.
Boosting Harris is rising Democratic enthusiasm, a 20-point lead over Trump on the issue of abortion, and an advantage for Harris on which candidate better looks out for the middle class.
On the other hand, Trump is supported by two-thirds of voters who believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction, a favorable assessment of Trump’s presidency, and a double-digit advantage on the economy and cost of living.
The nation’s intense polarization is also defining the close contest, with a gender gap of more than 30 points separating the voting preferences of men and women. Regardless of who wins the presidential race, 60% of voters believe the country will remain divided.
The stability in the survey stands out, with little changing in the contest since last month, despite the frenzied campaign activity of the final weeks and the billions of dollars in advertisements.
The 49%-49% race shown in this poll is essentially unchanged from the NBC News poll in October, when the two candidates were deadlocked at 48% each.
On an expanded ballot including third-party candidates, Trump is at 47% and Harris at 46%, with a combined 7% backing other candidates or undecided.
In a slightly more favorable environment for Republicans, Trump leads Harris by 2 points, 50%-48%.
However, in a more favorable turnout environment for Democrats, Harris leads Trump by 3 points, 50%-47%. All of these results are within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The NBC News poll results show that while the Republican and Democrat candidates are closely matched, there are significant differences in voter support among different groups.
Harris has the biggest advantages over Trump among Black voters (87%-9%), younger voters under 30 years old (57%-41%), and white voters with college degrees (55%-43%).
Trump leads among rural voters (75%-23%), white voters (56%-42%), and white voters without college degrees (64%-34%).
However, the gender gap between Harris and Trump remains a significant issue, with women supporting Harris by a 16-point margin (57%-41%) and men backing Trump by 18 points (58%-40%).
Harris holds an 8-point advantage among independent voters (51%-43%), but she’s ahead by just 9 points among Latino voters (53%-44%).
Trump is ahead on cost of living and the border, while Harris leads on abortion and the middle class.
Harris maintains a significant advantage on the issue of abortion, leading Trump by 20 points on which candidate better handles the issue.
Trump also holds double-digit leads on which candidate better handles the economy (51%-41%) and deals with the cost of living (52%-40%).
Voters are divided on which candidate better represents change (46% pick Harris, 41% select Trump), and who is more competent and effective (47% say Trump and 45% say Harris).
The poll shows that 41% of registered voters approve of President Joe Biden’s job performance, compared to 58% who say they disapprove.
When voters consider what concerns them more — Harris continuing the same approach as Biden or Trump continuing the same approach from his first term as president — 41% of voters say they are more concerned about Harris following in Biden’s path, compared with 40% who are more worried about Trump repeating the actions of his term.
Among the early-voting group, nearly two-thirds of the electorate, Harris leads Trump by 7 points in the head-to-head race, 53%-46%.
Trump and the Republican Party have invested significant effort in engaging his supporters to vote early this year. Regardless of who wins the presidential contest, 60% of registered voters in the poll say the U.S. will remain divided, versus 28% who think it will be more united after the election.
