Voters across the Sun Belt say that Donald J. Trump improved their lives when he was president — and worry that a Kamala Harris White House would not — setting the stage for an extraordinarily competitive contest in three key states, according to the latest polls from The New York Times and Siena College.
The polls found that Mr. Trump has gained a lead in Arizona and remains ahead in Georgia, two states that he lost to President Biden in 2020. But in North Carolina, which has not voted for a Democrat since 2008, Ms. Harris trails Mr. Trump by just a narrow margin.
The polls of these three states, taken from Sept. 17 to 21, presented further evidence that in a sharply divided nation, the presidential contest is shaping up to be one of the tightest in history.
[These latest Times/Siena results are some of the best results for Donald Trump in these states for weeks, Nate Cohn writes.]
Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina are on the roster of seven battleground states where the focus of both the Trump and Harris campaigns has been since Labor Day. Ms. Harris has shown relative strength in several key states across the Midwest, including, most critically to her hopes of becoming president, Pennsylvania.
But Arizona, which Mr. Biden won by just over 10,400 votes in 2020, now presents a challenge for the Harris campaign. Mr. Trump is ahead, 50 percent to 45 percent, the poll found. A Times/Siena poll there in August found Ms. Harris leading by five percentage points. Latino voters, in particular, appear to have moved away from Ms. Harris, though a significant number — 10 percent — said they were now undecided. And Mr. Trump is benefiting from ticket splitting there: While Ms. Harris is trailing, the poll shows that the Democratic candidate for Senate is ahead.
In North Carolina, which Mr. Trump won by under 75,000 votes in 2020, the former president has a slim lead over Ms. Harris, drawing 49 percent of the vote compared with 47 percent for Ms. Harris. (The poll was mostly conducted before reports that Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor there, had made disturbing posts in a pornography forum, which some Republicans fear could hurt Mr. Trump in the state.) And in Georgia, a state that Mr. Biden won by just under 11,800 votes in 2020, Mr. Trump continues to have a slight lead over Ms. Harris, 49 percent to 45 percent. The margin of error in each state is between four and five percentage points.
[Follow the latest polls and see updated polling averages of the Harris vs. Trump matchup.]
The polls found that voters in this part of the country were worried about their own future and the future of the nation, suggesting that Mr. Trump’s dark campaign rhetoric — “Our country is being lost, we’re a failing nation,” he said in the debate — could be resonating with some voters. A plurality said the nation’s problems were so bad that it was in danger of failing. Republicans were much more likely to hold that unsettled view of the future than Democrats, 72 percent to 16 percent.
“Whatever road we’re on right now just, to me, does not look like it’s going to end well,” said Tyler Stembridge, 41, a fire captain in Centerville, Ga., and a Republican who said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and intended to support him again in November.
In one striking finding, nearly four years after Mr. Trump was impeached by the House for “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the rioting of Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, respondents were evenly divided over the question over whether Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris would do a better job handling democracy.
But in one sign of how these contests remain up for grabs, about 15 percent of the electorate in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina described themselves as undecided or not definitely decided, leaving open the possibility that they could still change their minds. This group of voters had leaned toward Ms. Harris in these states in August but now lean slightly more toward Mr. Trump.
The latest round of Times/Siena polls comes as Ms. Harris has enjoyed a surge of contributions and enthusiasm among Democrats since her debate with Mr. Trump this month. And Ms. Harris continues to fare much better against Mr. Trump in the three states than President Biden did before he dropped out. A Times/Siena poll last week found Ms. Harris leading Mr. Trump by four percentage points in Pennsylvania, unchanged since before the debate. Both campaigns view that state as the most important battleground of the election.
While these three Sun Belt states have drawn a great deal of attention from both the Trump and Harris camps, North Carolina and Georgia are especially essential to the former president’s hopes of returning to the White House, analysts say. Ms. Harris could win even while losing all three of these states, though it would be difficult.
For many undecided and persuadable voters, character was a pressing concern, and that could be a challenge for Mr. Trump. Around a third of these voters said they had concerns about Mr. Trump’s personality and behavior, with another 9 percent expressing concerns about his honesty and ethics. About 7 percent of voters who were undecided or said they could still change their mind voiced concerns about Mr. Trump as a potential threat to democracy.
Concerns about Mr. Trump’s character loomed largest in North Carolina, where 44 percent of voters who were undecided or said they could still change their mind specifically cited his behavior, including erratic behavior and outlandish comments.
“The man is trouble,” said Samuel Russell, 69, a pastor in Concord, N.C., and an independent voter who said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and intended to vote for Ms. Harris this time. “He doesn’t care who he hurts. He doesn’t care who he throws under the bus. He lies through his teeth everyday. He will not take blame for anything. He’s just not a good person.”
Far fewer of the undecided or persuadable voters cited concerns about Ms. Harris’s behavior, though 16 percent had concerns about her judgment and personality, and 12 percent spoke of concerns about her honesty and follow-through. Notably, 12 percent of these voters who said they could still change their mind said their biggest concern about Ms. Harris was around her handling of the economy.
Notwithstanding Mr. Trump’s relative strengths, the polls paint a portrait of voters across these three battleground states as leaning toward more liberal policies and positions on some of the most contentious issues of the day. Two-thirds of voters in the states said they would like abortion to be always or mostly legal. (In Arizona, 58 percent of voters said they planned to back Proposition 139, which would provide a “fundamental right to abortion” in the state.)
A majority of respondents, 56 percent, said transgender people should be accepted for having the gender with which they identify. And 62 percent said they approved of the Supreme Court decision in 2015 guaranteeing a right to same-sex marriage.
At the same time, Mr. Trump’s “America First” message enjoys significant support. Just over 50 percent said America had lost out to its foreign competitors on trade, leading to a loss of jobs. Mr. Trump has promised to impose steep tariffs should he win the presidency. And a majority of respondents said the United States should be paying less attention to problems overseas and more to problems on the home front.
As in nearly every state and national poll conducted this year by Times/Siena, a plurality of voters — 31 percent — identified inflation or the economy as the top issue in deciding their vote. And 55 percent of these Sun Belt respondents said Mr. Trump would do a better job managing it, compared with 42 percent for Ms. Harris.
Abortion — an issue that Ms. Harris has focused on, assailing Mr. Trump for appointing Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion and leading to bans or restrictions in 22 states — was cited as the top issue by fewer voters.
Abortion and immigration were each cited as the top issue by 16 percent of likely voters. Respondents saw Mr. Trump as able to do a better job on immigration, 54 percent to 43 percent, and Ms. Harris as able to do a better job on abortion, 53 percent to 41 percent.
But Mr. Trump — who has sent conflicting signals on abortion — has closed the gap slightly with Ms. Harris on which candidate would do a better job on abortion rights, mostly by improving his standing on the issue with Republicans by a few points. In his debate with Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump declined to say whether, as president, he would sign a national abortion ban, contradicting his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, who had said that Mr. Trump would veto a national ban.
Ms. Harris has had a rocket ride of a candidacy since Mr. Biden dropped out and Democrats quickly rallied around her: the four-day celebratory Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the debate with Mr. Trump in Philadelphia and millions in campaign contributions that has permitted her to invest in advertising in battleground states, like these three, to shape American views of a late-arrival presidential candidate.
But with less than two months to go until Election Day, Ms. Harris has shown mixed success in selling her candidacy, at least in these three states. And the jubilant scenes from her rallies are not translating to some voters, who remain unpersuaded and unhappy. In one sign of that, women and young voters, who historically have supported Democratic candidates, are divided over whether Mr. Trump’s policies or Ms. Harris’s policies would be better for them.
Overall, 45 percent of respondents said Mr. Trump’s policies as president had helped them, and 34 percent said they had hurt them. “With Trump, he did what he said he was going to do,” said Erik Kerr, 55, a landscaper in Tucson, Ariz., who said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump.
“I work in a field where a lot of immigrants that have come across the border, they come in and they throw a shovel in the back of their truck and they call themselves landscapers,” he said, adding, “When I’ve been doing it for 35 years, it just kind of feels a little disheartening.”
By contrast, Michelle Bell, 60, a registered nurse in Garner, N.C., and a Democrat, said that if Mr. Trump were elected to a second term, his policies would harm a wide swath of voters.
“His policies hurt people like me because his interests are basically self-centered, very extreme,” said Ms. Bell, who said she voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and would support Ms. Harris this time. “He believes in conspiracy theories. He believes in spreading misinformation.”
The polls found that 42 percent of likely voters said Ms. Harris’s policies would hurt them, compared with 37 percent who said they would help them.
Angela Bullock, 54, a Republican living outside Charlotte, N.C., said a Harris presidency would create a “financial burden” for her.
“People coming across the border, flooding our schools with the children putting, you know, even more stress on teachers than they already have,” she said.
Both candidates are viewed more negatively than positively in the three states, but Ms. Harris’s favorability rating has fallen slightly since August, to 46 percent from 49 percent, while Mr. Trump’s popularity has remained relatively stable at about 47 percent.
The polls were mostly conducted before CNN reported that Mr. Robinson, a Trump ally who is the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, had once called himself a “black NAZI” and defended slavery in a series of postings on a pornographic website. In the immediate aftermath of the reports, Republicans were concerned that the scandal would not only cost them the race for governor but also pull down Mr. Trump in a state that he won by just over a percentage point in 2020.
Mr. Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, trailed his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, 47 percent to 37 percent in this poll. The results that were collected after the revelations about Mr. Robinson leaned more toward Mr. Stein, though ultimately did not change the nature of the race.
In another high-profile state race that was included in these polls, Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Arizona, is ahead of his Republican opponent, Kari Lake, 49 percent to 43 percent. The finding that voters there were more likely to support the Democrat running for Senate than the Democrat running for president was another sign of Ms. Harris’s challenges in Arizona.
The respondents who said they were splitting their ticket — supporting Mr. Gallego and Mr. Trump — were much more likely to be Latino, less college-educated and lower-income.
Here are the key things to know about these polls:
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Interviewers spoke with 713 registered voters in Arizona, 682 registered voters in Georgia and 682 registered voters in North Carolina from Sept. 17 to 21, 2024.
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Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, about 97 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for these polls. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
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Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For this poll, interviewers placed more than 250,000 calls to more than 116,000 voters.
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To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the results and methodology page, under “Composition of the Sample.”
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The margin of sampling error among likely voters is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points across the three states, plus or minus 4.4 percentage points in Arizona, plus or minus 4.6 percentage points in Georgia, and plus or minus 4.2 percentage points in North Carolina. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When computing the difference between two values — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about how and why The Times/Siena Poll is conducted, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here.
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