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Public polls are astrology for armchair politicos: We’re most likely to believe them when they tell us what we want to hear, even though we know they’ve been wrong before. Yet we can’t stop looking at them.
If you’re in that crowd, the stars have aligned for you this week, thanks to the release of nearly a half-dozen polls focused on Pennsylvania, arguably the nation’s most important battleground. Taken together, they suggest a narrow Harris lead, but nothing that can’t be reversed.
Emerson College
This poll out of Massachusetts canvassed 880 Pennsylvania likely voters between Sept. 15 and 18 and found Trump with a 1-point lead — essentially a tie in a survey with a 3.2% margin of error. Just over half of voters said the economy was their top issue, followed by “threats to democracy,” immigration, abortion access and health care.
Franklin & Marshall College
This Pennsylvania pollster, whose latest survey was conducted with 890 registered voters between Sept. 4 and 15, finds a 49-to-46 percent lead for Harris. That’s just inside the poll’s 4.1 percent margin for error. Voters were more likely to say her values align with theirs on issues such as abortion and in terms of her character, but they gave better marks to Trump on economic and military matters.
New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College
Some 1,082 Pennsylvania voters responded to this survey between Sept. 11 and Sept. 16. It found Harris leading Trump by 50 to 46 percent in a head-to-head match up. Voters overwhelmingly said she bested Trump in the candidates’ Sept. 10 debate, but they were likelier to say she was too liberal than to say Trump was too conservative … and Trump retained an edge on economic issues.
Suffolk University/USA Today
This poll queried 500 likely voters between Sept. 11 and 15 and found Harris leading Trump by three points — 48.6 to 45. 6 percent — a margin once again within the margin of error. The poll found that Harris was helped by a gender gap — leading Trump by 17 points among female voters while trailing by only 12 among men.
Washington Post
A survey of 1,003 likely voters finds Harris “leading” by 48 to 47 percent — a tie given the margin of error. Notably, voters told Post pollsters that a crucial issue was protecting American democracy — seven in 10 called it “extremely important” — but voters in both camps thought their candidate was the person to preserve it.
New York Post
No polling out this week, but astrologer Sally Brompton’s Sept. 19 forecast advised Trump, a Gemini, that while he “may have your doubts that what you are working on is worth the effort,” when the Sun changes signs this weekend, “will find that those efforts eventually pay off in happy ways.” Meanwhile Brompton acknowledged that Libras like Harris “endured a lot of stresses and strains of late but … when the Sun moves into your sign at the weekend the world will seem a happier place.” Given that the sun’s movements look to help both candidates, you can mark this one as too close to call.
All of which suggests — surprise! — a very tight race.
Of course if you are a Democrat, looming over all these results — like a solar eclipse over a Mayan temple — is the knowledge that Trump tends to outperform his polling. This time four years ago, Biden was leading Trump in Pennsylvania in polls by an average of nearly 5 percentage points: Biden won the state by just a touch more than one. In 2016, polls showed Hillary Clinton was leading Trump here by around 3 or 4 percent, and we know how that turned out.
There are some other parallels between now and 2016. There was a lot of talk after this year’s Democratic National Convention about how Democrats had “reclaimed patriotism” with their “U-S-A!” chants and their efforts to suggest Trump’s dark vision of the country was anti-American. But the same messaging was in evidence at the 2016 convention as well. Clinton was widely perceived to have won her debates with Trump, too.
But some surveys suggest a crucial difference. A WESA Campos Pulse Survey, undertaken with our partners at Campos Research & Insights, shows that Harris’ entry into the race has energized Democrats in a way that Clinton never did.
Our survey queried 400 adults in Campos’ 10,000-person research panel, all in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s a smaller sample than others cited above, but it’s big enough to suggest that replacing Joe Biden with Harris as the party’s nominee has paid off.
Half of Democrats said they were “much more enthusiastic” about voting than they felt three months ago; nearly another quarter said they were “somewhat” more enthusiastic. Among Republicans, only 28 percent said they were much more enthusiastic.
And while Republicans grouse that Harris never won a primary, Democrats may be prouder of their nominee than the GOP is. Among Democrats, 84 percent said a candidate’s principles and values were among the most important factors: Only 53 percent of Republicans cited that as a top concern.
By contrast, notwithstanding passionate support in some quarters, Clinton was dogged by concerns about flagging enthusiasm, a problem reflected both in polling and listless campaign events. And surveys suggest Harris has juiced support among key Democratic groups, including younger adults and people of color.
On the flip side, Harris’ entrance into the race has not reversed a larger trend of GOP party-registration gains, which leave Democrats in Pennsylvania with the smallest registration edge they have had in the quarter-century the state has tracked such numbers.
Still, she has made it a race, as opposed to the death march many Democrats were feeling before she jumped in. And as this space has suggested before, when polling is this tight, the best thing partisans on both sides can do is ignore it. Focus on organizing supporters instead. Because if your candidate loses, the fault will lie not in the stars but in yourself.
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