The final National NBC News survey The 2024 presidential campaign finds a neck-and-neck contest defined by colliding forces helping both Democrats. Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump They’re stalking the White House.
Taken together, the poll shows Harris with 49% of registered voters and Trump with 49%. Only 2% of voters say they are not sure about the choice.
Harris’ boost: growing Democratic enthusiasm, a 20-point advantage over Trump on abortion, and an advantage for Harris in which candidate focuses more on the middle class.
Helping Trump: two-thirds of voters who believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction, positive evaluations of Trump’s presidency — especially compared to President Joe Biden’s current performance — and Trump’s double-digit lead on the economy and cost of living.
The country’s strong polarization also determines close competition, including 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 is also noteworthy with little change in the competition since last monthdespite frenzied campaign activity and billions of dollars in advertising in recent weeks.
“It’s very stable data from where we were in October,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.
“We got further apart and picked our own corner,” McInturff said. “Each side is as close as they can be and they’re not budging or moving.”
The 49%-49% race shown in this poll is almost unchanged from before An NBC News poll in Octoberwhen the two candidates were deadlocked with 48% each.
In the expanded ballot, which includes third-party candidates, Trump has 47% to Harris’ 46%, with 7% overall supporting other candidates or undecided — again unchanged from October.
Given that close elections often decide which party is better at electing voters, the NBC News poll paints a picture of what might happen under even slightly different turnout scenarios.
In slightly more favorable conditions for Republicans — which means even a few percentage points higher turnout among men, white voters and voters without a college degree — Trump leads Harris by 2 points, 50%-48%.
But in a more Democratic-friendly environment — meaning a slight increase in women, college-educated white voters and voters of color going to the polls — this poll shows Harris ahead of 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.
Still, under the nation’s Electoral College system, the presidential race will ultimately be decided by what happens in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And recent polls of those states also find close margins and little certainty.
34-point gender gap
49%-49%, the results of the NBC News poll are as close as possible. However, large differences in candidate support remain among different groups.
According to the poll, Harris has the biggest advantages over Trump among black voters (87%-9%), young voters under 30 (57%-41%) and white college-educated voters (55%-43%).
And Trump leads among rural voters (75% to 23%), white voters (56% to 42%) and white voters without a college degree (64% to 34%).
However, what continues to stand out as one of the election’s defining features is the large gender gap between Harris and Trump, with women supporting Harris by 16 points (57-41) and men by 18 points. 58-40%).
That 34-point net gender gap is larger than the 30-point gap in October’s NBC News poll.
Harris has an 8-point lead among independent voters, 51% to 43%. However, he is ahead among Latino voters by just 9 points, 53% to 44%, although the sample size here is small and the margin of error is much larger than the overall poll.
Trump leads on cost of living and border; Harris leads on abortion and the middle class
As voters ponder how the candidates will handle key issues and presidential qualities, Harris holds a significant lead on the abortion issue, leading Trump by 20 points on which candidate has handled the issue better.
Harris also leads Trump by 9 points, 51%-42%, reflecting the candidate’s greater focus on the middle class.
In contrast, Trump has double-digit leads on the candidate’s better handling of the economy (51%-41%) and the living wage (52%-40%). He also maintains a 25-point lead on border security and immigration control, his strongest issues, consistently throughout the 2024 campaign.
But voters are largely split on which candidate represents change better (46% say Harris, 41% Trump) and split on who is more capable and effective (47% say Trump and 45% say Harris).
That’s a slight drop from October, when 48% of voters said they would do better with Harris being competent and effective, compared to 43% for Trump.
Biden remains a drag for Democrats
An NBC News poll shows that 41% of registered voters approve of President Joe Biden’s job performance, while 58% say they disapprove.
That’s down slightly from 43% who said they approved of his performance as president in October.
By comparison, when voters are asked to rate Trump’s time in office, 48% approve of the former president’s job performance, while 51% disapprove. duration.
Meanwhile, when voters consider what worries them more — Harris continuing the same approach as Biden or Trump — who has continued the same approach from his first term as president — 41% of voters say they are more worried about Harris going the way of Biden, compared to 40% More worried about Trump repeating the actions of his tenure.
An additional 14% of voters say neither is a concern.
More than half of voters say they have already voted
A field survey by Saturday evening found that 54% of registered voters had already cast their ballots, with another 11% saying they planned to vote early in the remaining days.
Among this group of early voters, roughly two-thirds of voters, Harris leads Trump by 7 points in a head-to-head race, 53%-46%. This is a significant change from the last NBC News poll of 2020, in which Biden led Trump by more than 20 points among these voters. Trump and the Republican Party spent significant efforts to get his supporters to the polls earlier this year.
Among the 33% of voters who said they would wait until Election Day, Trump has a 16-56%-40% advantage.
That compares to Trump’s nearly 30-point lead among voters this Election Day four years ago.
Other survey results
Regardless of who wins the presidential race, 60% of registered voters in the poll say the United States will remain divided, compared to 28% who think the United States will be more united after the election.
Harris and Trump have nearly identical popularity scores, with 43% of voters viewing Harris favorably and 50% unfavorably (-7 net rating). This compares to Trump’s score of 42% favorable and 51% negative (-9).
When it comes to the race for Congress, 47% of voters say they prefer Democrats to control Congress, while 46% want Republicans in charge. That’s largely unchanged from last month, when the two parties tied on the question at 47% each.
The NBC News poll was conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2 of 1,000 registered voters, most of whom were contacted by cellphone, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.