Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has received a boost among Hispanic and suburban women voters going into the final week before the election, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll that was published on Sunday.
The poll found that Harris holds a 2-point advantage among registered voters at 49 percent versus 47 percent who favor former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee. The gap grows to four points in favor of Harris, with a 51 percent advantage when looking at likely voters compared to Trump’s 47 percent.
Pro-Harris voters also showed a “bit more propensity to vote,” according to ABC News. The boost largely comes from growth of support amongst Hispanic voters and widened her gap among suburban women.
A September poll from ABC News/Ipsos found Trump closing the gap with Hispanic voters, with just a 17-point advantage for Harris among likely voters at that time. This fell below the roughly 30-point advantage Biden saw in 2020 exit polls. However, Harris notched a 30-point advantage among likely Hispanic voters in the newest survey.
Additionally, Harris had a roughly 9-point lead among suburban women likely voters in the September poll but grew that to 19 in the latest poll.
Meanwhile, Trump grew his lead among white men without college degrees from 26 points in September to 41 points in the latest poll, and also notched a 41-point advantage with rural voters in the latest poll.
Sunday’s ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online between October 18 and 22, with a random sampling of around 2,800 individuals, of which 2,392 identified as registered voters and 1,913 as likely voters. The poll’s results have a margin of error of 2 percentage points for the full sample and for registered voters, and 2.5 points for likely voters.
Newsweek reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns by email Sunday morning for comment.
Harris still struggles on the same issues that have troubled her since early on in her campaign. Voters have long felt pessimistic about the economy even as inflation reached its lowest level in three years and the United States added hundreds of thousands of jobs over the summer and 15 million jobs overall since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Similarly, the Trump campaign continued to hit Harris over her role on tackling undocumented immigration, dubbing her the “border czar” and slamming the Biden administration for not “closing the border” despite a significant drop in the number of people illegally crossing the southern border.
Trump, therefore, still has the advantage when voters look at who they trust more to handle the economy, crime and immigration. The former president also has the advantage on how to handle the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, 50 percent of Democrats polled said the U.S.-Mexico border is “highly important” to them versus 90 percent of Republicans.
The parties largely value the issues that their respective candidate has the advantage on, but the element that should give each candidate some pause is how independents rank on these issues.
According to Sunday’s poll, independent voters rated the economy (94 percent), inflation (84 percent), crime (77 percent) and protecting democracy (76 percent) as their top issues. They ranked conflict in the Middle East (52 percent), abortion (55 percent) and immigration (68 percent) as lower priorities.
Trump might also express concern over smaller margins among male voters than he had in 2020, with a 2-point drop compared to exit polls from that election. He also currently polls lower among white people, with his advantage dropping from 17 points versus President Joe Biden to only around 11 points versus Harris.
Despite Trump’s talk of making gains with Black voters, the poll found that Harris had a greater advantage among likely Black voters than Biden had in the 2020 exit polls, with 83 points versus 75 points.
The new poll also captured attitudes on “preference on personal attributes,” an under-analyzed element of voter sentiment, which found Harris overwhelmingly in the lead. These attributes included “good enough physical health,” “honest and trustworthy” and “mental sharpness,” among other aspects.
Polling remains a contentious issue in this election cycle, with each week seeming to show another switch in slight advantage between the candidates. CNBC’s new poll released on Thursday found Trump ahead of Harris by two points, with Trump preferred by 48 percent of respondents compared to 46 percent for Harris.
Meanwhile, conservative pollster Rasmussen on Friday said that it found—for the first time this cycle—Harris leading Trump, with a slender 1-point advantage, with 48 percent of respondents preferring Harris compared to 47 percent for Trump. This marks a three-point swing from Trump to Harris, but all polling remains within the margin of error.
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