Two of the nation’s most-contested battleground states — Pennsylvania and Arizona — illustrate the difficulties each campaign faces in gaining a clear advantage in the final stretch of the 2024 race, with Kamala Harris maintaining a narrow lead in Pennsylvania but Donald J. Trump continuing to hold an advantage in Arizona, according to a new pair of New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College polls.
The polls, from two states separated by more than 2,000 miles, show the challenge confronting both campaigns as they try to make their closing pitches to a diverse set of voters who have, at times, competing priorities.
In both Arizona and Pennsylvania, Ms. Harris has consolidated support among Democrats since replacing President Biden as the party’s nominee. But Mr. Trump’s strength remains the economy, the issue primarily responsible for his political potency across Arizona and other battleground states this year.
In Pennsylvania, Ms. Harris’s polling lead has been steady, though the state remains tight. Her advantage, 50 percent to 47 percent, falls inside the margin of error. But this was the third Times/Siena survey in two months showing support for Ms. Harris from at least half of the state. (Her lead in the poll was four percentage points when calculated using unrounded figures.)
Fueling Ms. Harris in the state is her commanding lead of nearly 20 percentage points when it comes to handling abortion, her single best issue across battleground states and the second most important concern for Pennsylvania voters.
Both campaigns see Pennsylvania as the most pivotal battleground in this election, and are putting more money, time and energy there than anywhere else, including $350 million in television ads from Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump and their allies.
One recent shift was visible in the education gap, which the polls showed has narrowed for both candidates. Ms. Harris made up ground in the past month among Pennsylvanians without a college degree, while Mr. Trump cut into her advantage with more educated voters.
Mr. Trump’s strength in Pennsylvania remains the economy. He had an 11-point advantage over Ms. Harris on the issue, up from a 4-point gap in September.
In Arizona, Mr. Trump was ahead, 51 percent to 46 percent, or six percentage points when calculated using unrounded figures, nearly unchanged from September, when the poll showed the former president leading, 50 percent to 45 percent.
Victory is far from secured for either candidate in either state. Other surveys from high-quality pollsters have shown tighter races in both states. According to New York Times polling averages, Mr. Trump is ahead by just two percentage points in Arizona, and Ms. Harris is ahead by just one point in Pennsylvania.
Bolstering Mr. Trump’s advantage in Arizona was, once again, the economy. More Arizonans said they preferred him over Ms. Harris on that issue, 56 percent to 41 percent. More Arizonans expect Mr. Trump to be better at helping people like themselves, and he has a slight edge on the question of who would be better at helping the working class. That was a contrast from Pennsylvania, where voters give Ms. Harris similarly narrow advantages on the same questions.
Voters in Arizona were also more inclined than their counterparts in Pennsylvania to say more broadly that Mr. Trump would be better at handling whatever issue they viewed as most important. He has a nine-point advantage on that question in Arizona, even as he and Ms. Harris run even on it in Pennsylvania.
Both Arizona and Pennsylvania also feature hotly contested Senate contests. The Democratic candidate in each holds a clear advantage, according to the new polling.
Republicans need to flip two Senate seats to win back power if Democrats maintain control of the White House, but just one if Mr. Trump wins the presidency. Republicans are already expected to gain one seat in West Virginia with the retirement of Senator Joe Manchin III, an independent from West Virginia who caucuses with the Democrats.
In Pennsylvania, Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat, is holding a slim lead against David McCormick, a Republican businessman, 48 percent to 44 percent. Mr. McCormick’s four-point deficit is down from nine points last month, and 8 percent of voters said they remained undecided.
In the Senate contest in Arizona, Representative Ruben Gallego, the Democratic candidate, maintained his lead over Kari Lake, a former television anchor and outspoken Trump ally, 48 percent to 41 percent. But a fairly large share of voters, 10 percent, said they remained undecided.
The most conflicted voters in the Arizona Senate race appear to be Trump supporters. Less than 80 percent of the former president’s voters said they planned to back Ms. Lake, whom Mr. Trump endorsed in this race and in her failed bid for governor in 2022.
The ticket-splitters in Arizona appeared to be primarily younger voters and disproportionally Latino, and they included more women than men.
An Arizona ballot measure that would codify “the fundamental right to an abortion” continued to draw support from more than half of voters, although support has shrunk since last month.
Here are the key things to know about these polls from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College
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Interviewers spoke with 808 voters in Arizona from Oct. 7 to 10 and 857 voters in Pennsylvania from Oct. 7 to 10.
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Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, more than 95 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 these polls, interviewers placed more than 180,000 calls to nearly 60,000 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 about plus or minus four percentage points. 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 the difference between two values is computed — 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 we conduct our polls, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here.
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