Former President Donald Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania has shrunk among very likely voters, according to a poll released Friday.
With 81 days left until Election Day, the former president is in a neck-and-neck race with Vice President Kamala Harris in the Keystone State, according to August’s poll by Emerson College and RealClearPennsylvania. Out of 1,000 likely Pennsylvanian voters surveyed on August 13 and August 14, 49 percent backed Trump, with 48 percent picking his Democratic opponent. The poll has a margin of error of 3 percent, meaning the candidates are in a statistical tie.
A deeper look at the results showed potential trouble for Trump, however, whose campaign has lost momentum since Harris entered the 2024 presidential race. Out of the respondents who indicated they were very likely to vote in November, 49 percent said they would vote for Trump over Harris. When the same question was posed to very likely voters toward the end of July in a poll by Emerson College and The Hill, Trump was backed by 50.5 percent of Pennsylvanians.
Adam Gray/Getty Images
In comparison, Harris was backed by 48 percent of very likely Pennsylvanian voters in August’s poll. In last month’s survey, which was conducted in the days following Harris’ campaign launch, the vice president was backed by just 45 percent of very likely voters.
Pennsylvania—and its 19 Electoral College votes—is seen as one of the key states to win on either candidate’s path to victory in November. President Joe Biden flipped the state for Democrats in the 2020 presidential election, beating Trump by just 1.2 percent of the vote.
Polling has shown Harris making grounds in all seven closely watched swing states. In Arizona, which has 11 electoral votes, Harris is four points ahead of Trump, per Cook Political Report Swing State Project Survey released on Wednesday. That report showed Harris five points ahead in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes.
Newsweek reached out to Harris and Trump’s campaigns via email for comment on the latest Emerson College/RealClearPennsylvania poll on Friday.
Trump’s campaign previously warned of a “honeymoon” period for Democrats following the beginning of Harris’ campaign, and the former president often claims that he is still “way ahead” in polling. But with less than 12 weeks until Election Day, experts have told Newsweek that the momentum around Harris’ campaign could last through November.
“It’s starting to feel like a long honeymoon now,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.
“And that might be true if we were looking at if this were January of this year, but we’re practically at Labor Day, and we haven’t even had the [Democratic] convention yet,” Walsh added while speaking with Newsweek via phone on Friday. “So I think it is to her advantage that this is a short campaign.”
The Democratic National Convention will kick off on Monday in Chicago. Harris has already been designated as the Democratic presidential nominee.
