Vice President Harris holds a razor-thin lead over former President Trump in a new poll, marking the latest gain for the Harris campaign in the Tar Heel State.
A new High Point University/SurveyUSA poll published Thursday found Harris received 46 support from North Carolina registered voters, 1 point higher than Trump, who shored up 45 percent support. Eight percent said they were undecided.
Among those who said they are certain they will vote in November, Harris has a 2-point lead over Trump, 48 to 46 percent Trump, pollsters said.
Things significantly shifted among North Carolina voters who said they would “probably vote,” the poll found, with Trump leading Harris by 10, 50 to 40 percent.
When pollsters combined certain and probable voters, which Survey USA defined as “likely voters,” Harris and Trump are tied, with 47 percent each.
The poll comes days after a leading election forecaster, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said it moved North Carolina from a “leans Republican” column to a “toss-up” as she gains support in the state and across the country.
According to the election handicapper, North Carolina now joins Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania as toss-up states.
President Biden won those states in 2020, except for North Carolina, which analysts still call the “reddest” swing state of the bunch. The forecasters said they were skeptical the Tar Heel State could turn blue for Harris, while noting there are still two months to go before the election.
A polling index by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill shows Harris with a 1.2 percent lead over Trump in North Carolina.
Since replacing Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket last month, Harris quickly gained momentum, posing a threat to the healthy lead Trump held over the president, both nationally and in swing states.
Nonetheless, some political strategists have suggested that it is too early to make conclusions about the November election, and that the momentum for Harris could decrease in the coming two months.
The HPU/Survey USA poll was conducted Aug. 19-21 among 1,053 total registered voter responses. Pollsters noted the online sample does not adhere to assigning a classic margin of sampling error, though HPU’s Survey Research Center (SRC) “provides credibility intervals of plus or minus 4 percentage points for the registered voter sample to account for a traditional 95% confidence interval.”
