Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a dead heat in all seven of the battleground states that will decide the outcome of next month’s US presidential election, according to a poll published on Friday by the Wall Street Journal.
Sampling 4,200 voters, the poll found Harris with a razor-thin lead over Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Trump holding a slim advantage in Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
However, the newspaper noted that no lead is wider than two percentage points, except for in Nevada, where Trump leads by five points. All of these results are within the newspaper’s margin of error.
Across all seven swing states, Trump leads Harris by 46% to 45%, the poll found. Some 93% of Republicans are backing Trump, while 93% of Democrats are supporting Harris, the WSJ noted, adding that independents prefer Harris by a slim 40% to 39%.
“This thing is a dead heat and is going to come down to the wire. These last three weeks matter,” Republican pollster David Lee, who worked on the survey, told the newspaper.
“It really could not be closer,” Democrat pollster Michael Bocian said. “It’s an even-steven, tight, tight race.”
A slew of recent polls have shown Trump and Harris within the low single digits of each other in these key states, with Trump gaining the upper hand in every state but Wisconsin in an average compiled by RealClearPolitics.
Voters surveyed by the Wall Street Journal ranked the economy and immigration as their top two issues of concern, respectively. They favored Trump over Harris on economic issues by ten points, and on immigration and border security by 16 points. Harris beat Trump on the issue of abortion by 16 points.
By this time in the 2020 campaign, President Joe Biden was leading Trump by five points in the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump won all three of these post-industrial northern battlegrounds in 2016, and lost them to Biden in 2020. Winning all three would likely guarantee the presidency to either Trump or Harris this year.