Harris has a slight lead in FAU national poll; Trump far ahead in Florida

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight lead nationally in Florida Atlantic University’s final pre-election national poll, released Tuesday. The race is so close — 2 percentage points — that she’s effectively tied with former President Donald Trump.

A companion Florida poll shows the state isn’t competitive in the presidential race, with Trump significantly ahead of Harris.

Nationally, Harris leads Trump 49% to 47% among likely voters.

In Florida, Trump leads Harris 53% to 44% among likely voters.

The major takeaway: The election is ultra close. Either candidate could win the presidency. “If Harris were to win, no one should be surprised. If Trump were to win, no one should be surprised,” Robert Martin, senior data analyst for Mainstreet Research, said in a polling briefing at FAU.

FAU found 2% of likely voters nationally were undecided and another 2% said they’d vote for a minor party candidate.

Nationally, FAU political scientist Kevin Wagner said, “The polling suggests it’s very close.” Right now, he said, “the outcome seems very much in doubt even though it may not look like that when we count the votes.”

The FAU findings are in line with other national polls. The New York Times polling tracker on Tuesday had Trump leading Harris by 1 percentage point nationally.

In the Florida-only poll, Trump’s lead over Harris was 9 percentage points among likely voters. FAU’s previous Florida poll, in August, had Trump leading Harris by 3 percentage points, 50% to 47%.

Martin described Trump as “firmly favored” in Florida.

Senate race

Florida Atlantic University’s poll of state voters found U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is ahead of his Democratic challenger, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, but not by an overwhelming margin.

It had Scott with 50% to 46% for Mucarsel-Powell, an advantage of 4 percentage points among likely voters.

Notably, Scott isn’t doing as well with Florida voters as Trump and Mucarsel-Powell is doing better than Harris in Florida, the poll found.

Florida isn’t the only state in which the Republican Senate candidate isn’t polling as well as Trump.

“There’s a bit of a puzzle as to why the former president is running ahead of the Senate races in a lot of these battleground states. That hasn’t been the tendency that we’ve seen in other presidential elections,” Wagner said.

In an increasingly polarized nation, more and more voters have been voting in recent elections for candidates of the same party for top offices, and not splitting tickets.

“We have to see if this is going to be one of those years where people are going to cross party lines and vote for different parties for president and the Senate,” Wagner said. He is co-director of FAU’s PolCom Lab, a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science, which conducted the poll.

The national FAU poll found 70% of voters said they’d vote for candidates from the same party for president and/or U.S. House and Senate and 25% said they’d vote for a mix or different parties.

Scott’s 4-point Florida lead is relatively good fof him.

“Even if the margins have been smaller than anybody expected, Scott has had a lead pretty much throughout and that tends to bode well on Election Day,” Wagner said.

Scott himself has noted that he’s never had a history of strong poll performances, and he’s gone on to win elections for governor in 2010 and 2014 and Senate in 2018. “A lot of people have thought Scott was going to lose in many different races, and if history is a guide, Senator Scott does tend to win these in a very close fashion,” Wagner said.

Still, Wagner added, until the votes are counted, “No one should feel terribly comfortable in this election cycle, because we clearly are a closely divided country.”

Men strongly favored Scott, 54% to 42% and women slightly favored Mucarsel-Powell, 50% to 45%.

Mucarsel-Powell has support of 95% of Democrats and Scott has support of 92% of Republicans. Among independents, Mucarsel-Powell leads Scott 55% to 37%.

Presidential race

Though close in the national polling, the presidential election is a series of state-by-state contests to award electoral votes.

Ultimately, it could turn out that Harris or Trump wins what looks like a blowout victory in the Electoral College if one of them sweeps most of the seven battleground states that are the closely contested contests that will decide the presidency.

It’s also possible, Wagner said, that there are undetected patterns occurring.

For example, he said, polling may not have picked up on changes among certain groups, or in groups of new voters who haven’t participated before.

FAU’s previous national poll, released Sept. 20, showed Harris leading Trump 50% to 45%. Its Aug. 27 national poll found 49% supporting Harris and 45% Trump.

Florida, a state that’s become significantly more Republican in recent years, is a Trump state. “It’s pretty clear that former President Trump has a strong support base in Florida,” Wagner said.

FAU’s poll did not show the kind of gender gap that other surveys have shown.

Nationally it found Trump and Harris tied at 48% among men, and Harris leading Trump 50% to 46%.

In Florida, Trump has a large advantage among men, leading Harris 58% to 39%. Among women, the presidential contest effectively is tied, with 50% for Harris and 48% for Trump.

Almost everyone favored the candidate of their party, with 97% of Florida Democrats saying they’d vote for Harris and 96% of Florida Republicans going for Trump.

Florida independent voters were fairly evenly divided, with 46% for Harris and 42% for Trump.

Understands average Americans

Nationally, the poll found the candidates were essentially tied on the question of which candidate “best understands the challenges facing the average American today?”

The results were 47% Harris, 44% Trump, 8% neither and 1% didn’t know.

For Democrats (92% Harris) and Republicans (86% Trump), their answers aligned with their party leaning. Independents were divided, with 44% picking Harris and 38% Trump.

Fine print

The national poll of 937 U.S. registered voters was conducted Oct. 20 to 27 by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab. The Florida poll, of 913 registered voters, was conducted Oct. 19 to 27.

The national survey used an online panel and text messaging to reach voters with a link to complete the survey. The Florida survey used texting only to reach voters. Each survey has a margin of error equivalent to plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full survey of Democrats, Republicans and independents.

However, the margin of error for smaller groups, such as Republicans or Democrats or men and women, would be higher because the sample sizes are smaller.

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