The latest surveys from seven battleground states show that former President Donald Trump could win in November with a definitive 296 electoral votes.
Trafalgar polled individuals between August 28 and 30 and saw Trump sweeping 44 electoral votes from crucial Blue Wall states in November, squeaking out narrow wins in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania inside the polls’ margins of error.
Insider Advantage conducted polling in four additional battlegrounds between August 29 and 31, and North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada also went to Trump.
To be clear, each of these states remains statistically a dead heat, meaning they could ultimately go either way on Election Day.
However, the polling is a deviation from recent polling that shows Democrat presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris making gains in the states that will determine the election.
In Michigan, Trafalgar has Trump scoring a slim victory, 47% to 46.6%, while Pennsylvania shows a broader lead for the former president, 47% to 45%.
While achieving a 2% victory wouldn’t be considered a landslide, it would be a more substantial margin than Trump’s modest 0.72% victory in the state eight years ago.
In the meantime, Wisconsin splits the two extremes, with Trump leading Harris 47% to 46%. Although the margin seems narrow, Trump won the state by 0.77% in 2016 and lost it by 0.63% in 2020.
It’s worth noting that the RealClearPolitics polling average shows that all three states are moving toward Harris, with Michigan shifting on August 29.
Trump leads in Arizona 49% to 48% in the race to win 11 electoral votes, a narrower margin than Biden’s 0.3% win just four years ago and one that would trigger an automatic recount in the state. The former president leads by over 12 points among independents.
A 9.5% lead amongst independents buoys Trump in Nevada to a 48% to 47% lead, where six electoral votes are up for grabs. Trump lost the state in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.
In the meantime, Trump also leads Harris 49% to 48% in North Carolina, which is lower than the 1.34% victory margin he secured in 2020, and despite VP Harris in the lead with independents 50% to 46%. If he is victorious, Trump could secure the 16 electoral votes available in the Tar Heel State.
Georgia represents the only deviation in the trend, with Harris up 48% to 47.6% in the race for the Peach State’s 16 electoral votes. She holds a minuscule lead with independents, 45.2% to 45.1%.
ActiVote Poll: Shows Harris’ lead over Trump ‘Steadily Cut’
According to ActiVote’s latest poll, Vice President Kamala Harris’ lead in the presidential race over former President Trump has been ‘steadily cut.”
The survey, conducted between August 25 and September 2, shows VP Harris remains ahead of Trump by 1.6% points (50.8% to 49.2%). However, Newsweek reported on Tuesday that those figures are down from the 5-point lead she had over Trump in the company’s last poll, taken August 15-23.
The latest poll results still fall within the poll’s margin of error of 3.1%.
“Harris’ poll numbers improved steadily for about three to four weeks after [Joe] Biden dropped out, followed by a period of two weeks where it hovered around a 5-point lead,” said Victor Allis, ActiVote pollster. “In the past five days, that 5-point lead has been steadily cut to under 2 percent.
Before President Biden halted his reelection campaign, Trump had held a solid lead against him in the seven swing states and nationally.
However, after she entered the Democratic campaign, VP Harris polled higher than the former president, including leads in six of the seven swing states.
Other polls also demonstrate that Harris’s lead may be decreasing.
Friday, pollster Nate Silver’s forecast model showed Trump leading Harris in the Electoral College for the first time since August began, giving him a 52.4% chance of winning, compared to 47.3% for VP Harris.
Silver’s model showed the GOP gaining 0.2 points to 2.1 points in all swing states besides Georgia in the past week.
However, Silver stated that poll numbers for Harris could begin to climb again in his model, considering that she is out of the traditional post-convention bounce period.
VP Harris’ numbers in swing state polls are also softening.
The most recent SurveyUSA/KSTP poll showed Harris’ lead over Trump had been halved, from 10 points to 5 points in Minnesota since the end of July.
Additionally, the FiveThirtyEight poll tracker shows that Kamala Harris’s lead in Michigan dipped from 3.3 points on August 21 to 2.4 points.
Other recent polls show former President Trump in the lead in Pennsylvania, including a survey from the Trafalgar Group that shows him leading by 2 points. Additional polls from Emerson College and Wick showed them tied among the likely voters in the state.
“If she’s only tied in Pennsylvania now, during what should be one of her stronger polling periods, that implies being a slight underdog in November,” said Silver in his Silver Bulletin newsletter.
