Trump chips away at Harris’s national advantage, two new polls show

Two polls released Sunday show that former president Donald Trump is chipping away at Vice President Kamala Harris’s national advantage in the presidential race, as the candidates gear up for the final weeks of the campaign season.

A new ABC News-Ipsos poll, conducted from Oct. 4-8, showed that among likely voters, Harris led Trump 50 percent to 48 percent, within the poll’s margin of error. Last month, the same poll found Harris at 51 percent support among likely voters compared to Trump at 46 percent.

An NBC News poll also conducted from Oct. 4-8 and showed an even split between Trump and Harris, with each garnering 48 percent support among registered voters. In that same poll last month, Harris was up by five points — another result within the poll’s margins.

A CBS News-YouGov poll conducted a few days later, from Oct. 8-11 but released also Sunday, found less of a shift.

Among likely voters nationally, support for Harris was at 51 percent and support for Trump at 48 percent, similar to Harris’s four-point edge last month. Likely voters in battleground states supported Harris over Trump 51 percent to 49 percent in the latest poll. In both cases, Harris’s advantage is within the poll’s margin of error of 2.3 points — which means that each candidate’s support could be 2.3 points higher or lower.

The Washington Post’s presidential polling average, which includes these surveys, shows that little has changed over the past month, and Harris continues to have a two-point advantage nationally.

The latest polls also show other shifts in Trump’s direction.

The ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 56 percent of Americans favor deporting all undocumented immigrants, up 20 points from a Washington Post-ABC News poll eight years ago. The poll also found that Trump maintained a 10-point lead in trust to handle immigration.

In recent rallies, Trump has been leaning more into a nativist, anti-immigrant message and falling back on fearmongering, falsehoods and stereotypes.

In the ABC News poll, about 59 percent said the economy is getting worse. Among registered voters who say the economy is getting worse, Trump led Harris 74 percent to 21 percent.

A New York Times-Siena College poll, conducted from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6, found that Harris’s support among Latino voters is substantially lower than the support Biden is estimated to have received in the 2020 presidential race.

Some 56 percent of Hispanic likely voters said they were backing Harris and 37 percent backing Trump, compared with Biden’s 62 percent support among Hispanic voters in 2020 according to exit polls and comparable sources.

Among Black likely voters, the latest poll found that about 15 percent of Black likely voters said they planned to vote for Trump — up six points compared to 2020.