OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign got another round of good news on Tuesday in the form of a stunning new survey showing him surging ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in the battleground state of North Carolina.
The survey, which collected responses from 1,042 likely voters, revealed that 51 percent of North Carolinians intend to support Trump in the 2024 presidential race, while 46 percent favor Harris.
Rasmussen Reports and American Thinker, a conservative online magazine, conducted the poll between October 9 and October 14.
The survey indicates that Trump holds one of his largest leads in the Tar Heel State, just three weeks ahead of Election Day. North Carolina has the potential to become a tipping-point state in November, and overall polling has shown that the contest between Harris and Trump is one of the closest battles this election season.
According to the Rasmussen poll, voters identified the economy as the top issue influencing their choice for the Oval Office. The second most crucial issue was abortion, then border security.
When asked which issue is “the most important one for the next president to solve” among four options—abortion rights, illegal immigration, rising prices, and protecting our democracy—voters in the survey released Tuesday chose immigration as their primary concern (29 percent), followed by rising prices (24 percent), protecting democracy (23 percent), and abortion rights (22 percent), Newsweek reported, citing the data.
The majority of respondents (70 percent) expressed a desire for the next president to bring about a “major change.” Additionally, over three-quarters (77 percent) of likely voters surveyed stated that their choice for president is based on “support” for a candidate rather than the desire to “keep one candidate from winning.”
Tracking from FiveThirtyEight finds that Trump is up by 0.9 points across statewide polls in North Carolina, leading Harris 48.2 percent to 47.3 percent on average, Newsweek reported.
Trump led Harris by 3 points in the Tar Heel State in a survey by The Washington Post from September 25 to September 29, which included responses from 1,001 registered voters.
Meanwhile, a poll by ActiVote conducted from September 7 to October 6, surveying 400 likely voters, showed Harris leading by 2 points, with 51 percent compared to Trump’s 49 percent.
If the Rasmussen survey is any indication, it appears that support for Trump has significantly increased since Hurricane Helene devastated the state and complaints about the Biden-Harris administration’s slow FEMA response.
For the first time, a noted election prediction model has shifted to “lean” toward Trump after weeks of indicating that the race was a “toss-up.”
The change results from a series of new polling data suggesting that Harris’s national lead has diminished or vanished entirely.
Additionally, multiple swing states now show the former president holding a narrow lead in most of the battlegrounds that will ultimately determine the outcome of the next election, the UK’s DailyMail.com reported.
The outlet teamed with J.L. Partners to create an election model that now gives Trump a nearly 63 percent chance of winning.
“When those numbers are fed into our exclusive prediction model, it shows that Trump would claim the overall win in 62.4 percent of our simulations. At the end of last week, he was at 59.8 percent. The new numbers suggest the momentum is with him rather than the vice president, and it shifts the overall result from ‘toss-up’ to ‘lean Trump,’” the outlet reported.
“Even so, with Harris having nearly a 40 percent chance of victory, the election could still be one of the closest in history. With three weeks left of campaigning, there is everything to fight for. Callum Hunter, a data scientist at J.L. Partners, noted that key polls include New York Times surveys showing Trump with a five- to six-point lead in Arizona while Harris holds a three- to four-point lead in Pennsylvania. Additionally, a Redfield and Wilton poll indicates Trump has a two-point lead in Pennsylvania,” the outlet reported.
“The race continues to move in Trump’s favor despite a New York Times poll giving Harris the edge in Pennsylvania,” Hunter wrote in his latest briefing memo.
“This poll was balanced out by a poll from R&W and the underlying national shift against Harris. It is important to remember that this model uses correlations as well as national vote shares to obtain each state’s average. This means that every state poll affects every other state – so a single poll that is good for Harris is not necessarily going to push things in that state in her favor,” it added.
