Trump holds edge in key poll

The polling agency that accurately predicted his victory in 2016 says former President Donald Trump now stands a point ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in his second attempt at a second term, though the race for the White House in its final two weeks remains locked in a statistical tie.

Trump’s small lead, according to TIPP Insights, is down from a two-point split seen in the polling agency’s last daily tracking poll, but is nevertheless a reversal of fortunes for the former president from when the pollsters first began their countdown-to-November.

“Former President Donald Trump’s support against VP Kamala Harris now enjoys a one-point lead, 48% to 47%, in the TIPP tracking poll,” pollsters wrote.

The first release of the TIPP tracker, on Oct. 14, showed Harris leading the 45th president by three points, just barely outside the poll’s 2.8-point margin of error.

A Suffolk University/USA Today poll found the race all but tied in a contest including third party options — they show Harris has a one-point advantage in a 3.1-point-margin survey — and the director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, David Paleologos, said those third parties may prove to be the only thing that breaks the tie.

“In 2016, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (yes, the same Jill Stein) each received more votes in the 3 ‘blue wall’ states than the margin by which Hillary Clinton lost,” Paleologos wrote in a USA Today column published Monday.

“Then in 2020, Libertarian Jo Jorgensen, the only significant third-party candidate, received more votes than the margin by which Trump lost in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin,” Paleologos wrote.

According to the professor, if the Harris campaign were to push Republican voters toward Libertarian Chase Oliver or Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who dropped out, but remains on the ballot in several states), that might swing the overall vote in the key battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in her favor. The same can be said for Trump with Independent Cornel West or Stein — if enough Democratic-leaning voters choose either left-leaning alternative, that’s potentially enough to hand him those three states.

“It’s too late to try to remove third-party candidates from the ballot, but there is a way for Harris and Trump to make the composition of each state’s ballot work for them: forget trying to convince voters to choose you, and instead try to convince your opponent’s softest voters to pick someone else,” Paleologos advises.

An Emerson College Poll released late last week showed precisely the same deadlock — with Harris up by one point but inside the margins — and also showed third party candidates grabbing a small but significant amount of the vote at 1%.

Spencer Kimball, the executive director of Emerson College Polling, said with that poll’s release that the survey demonstrates some clear splits in voter support.

“Women and male voters break in near opposite directions: men for Trump, 56% to 42%, and women for Harris, 55% to 41%. Hispanic voters break for Harris, 61% to 35% and Black voters 81% to 12%, while white voters break for Trump 60% to 38%,” Kimball said.

Voters who haven’t yet made up their mind — one supposes they must exist, since the Emerson survey found more than a few people making that assertion — tend to lean toward Harris, according to Kimball.

“Voters who made their decision on who to support over a month ago break for Trump, 52% to 48%, while voters who made up their mind in the last month or week break for Harris, 60% to 36%,” Kimball said. “The 3% of voters who said they could still change their mind currently favor Harris, 48% to 43%.”

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