Harris and Trump in dead heat across swing states

Washington — Vice-president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump remain in a tight contest across seven battleground states with just over two weeks until the November 5 election, a Washington Post/Schar School opinion poll showed on Monday.

Democratic Party candidate Harris led among voters in Georgia 51% to 47%, while Republican Trump was ahead in Arizona with 49% to 46%. Both findings fell within the 4.5 percentage point margin of error in the poll, which surveyed 5,016 registered voters from September 30 to October 15.

Harris, who became the party’s candidate after President Joe Biden stepped aside in July, also had an edge in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — three states where she will campaign later on Monday.

Trump led in North Carolina and was tied with Harris in Nevada 48% to 48%, according to the poll.

Trump is making his third consecutive White House bid after losing to Biden in 2020. He continues to falsely blame widespread voter fraud and faces federal and state criminal charges over efforts to overturn the election results, among other charges. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Harris is a former San Francisco prosecutor, state attorney-general and US senator seeking to rebuild the party’s diverse coalition of young voters and women and people of colour, as well as pick up some Republicans disillusioned with Trump.

Monday’s findings from the Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government echoed other recent polls that found a neck and neck race in the seven battleground states ahead of election day even as Harris holds an edge nationwide, according to some surveys. Overall, 49% of likely voters said they supported Harris and 48% backed Trump, the Post poll showed. Among registered voters, Reuters/Ipsos polling last week found Harris holding a steady, marginal 45% to 42% lead over Trump.

However, state-by-state results of the electoral college will determine the winner of November’s contest. The seven battleground states are likely to decisive, with surveys of their likely voters offering an indication of the race so far.

On Monday, Harris and Trump delivered radically different messages on the US campaign trail as they sought to win over undecided voters.

Harris, campaigning alongside former Republican legislator Liz Cheney, argued that Trump was such a threat to democracy even Trump’s former supporters were turning against him.

“In many, many ways Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences of him being president of the United States are brutally serious,” Harris said at an event in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Trump, 78, frequently rejects any notion that he is a threat to democracy, arguing that it is Democrats who are the real threat because of the criminal investigations he and his allies have faced for their attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Trump urged supporters in the conservative, hurricane-battered mountains of North Carolina to go to the polls despite the hardships they were facing.

During wide-ranging remarks, the former president repeated his criticisms of the emergency management agency Fema and sought to relate to working-class supporters by praising his nonstop efforts on his own behalf.

“I’ve done 52 days without a day off, which a lot of these people would respect,” Trump said at a lectern backed by rubble from massive floods that hit the area last month.

With opinion polls showing a close race, the two candidates are picking up the pace, their frenzied campaign schedules underlining the importance of small pockets of voters that could put either candidate over the top.

During her event in Malvern, population 3,400, Harris urged Republican voters to put the country’s interests over those of their party by voting for her.

She also campaigned in Wisconsin and Michigan on Monday with Cheney, who told Republicans Trump was a “totally erratic, completely unstable” person who should not be re-elected.

Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, who was vice-president under President George W Bush and is still vilified by many Democrats for his bullish defence of the US invasion of Iraq, are staunch conservatives and two of the most prominent Republicans to have endorsed Harris.

Harris is turning to Cheney to try to enlist support from more Republican voters wary of handing Trump another four years in the White House.

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump called Liz Cheney “dumb as a rock” and a “war hawk”. He accused her of wanting to go to war with “every Muslim country known to mankind”, just like her father, who he called “the man that ridiculously pushed Bush to go to war in the Middle East”.

Trump's visit to North Carolina on Monday coincided with concerns among his Republican allies that crippling damage from storm Helene will depress turnout in the battleground state’s conservative mountain regions.

“Obviously, we want them to vote but we want them to live and survive and be happy and healthy, because this is really a tragedy,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Swannanoa, population 5,300, after touring areas destroyed by the storm.

He said many Americans felt left behind by their federal government and renewed unsubstantiated claims that the response from the Biden administration has been slow, accusations the White House has rejected as misinformation.

Previously, Trump has falsely suggested officials were slow-walking aid to Republican pockets of the state. Democrats have said Trump’s criticisms have made it harder for aid agencies to do their jobs.

Reuters