Harris sees troubling signs in latest New York Times/Siena poll

The final national poll before Election Day from The New York Times and Siena College has some troubling signs for Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The poll finds Harris deadlocked with former President Trump, the GOP nominee, after she led him in an earlier version of the poll taken in October by 3 percentage points.

The new poll is sparking talk that Harris could actually lose the popular vote to Trump.

The Democratic ticket has won the popular vote in the last four elections, and seven of the last eight races, though two of those battles in 1992 and 1996 included strong third-party showings by the independent candidate Ross Perot.

Much of the talk surrounding the 2024 race has been about the chances of Harris winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College to Trump, given the tightness of polling in seven key swing states.

But the New York Times poll suggests Harris is not building up the type of huge lead in the popular vote that might suggest she would also win the closely fought swing states.

Both candidates received 48 percent of the popular vote in the poll. In early October, Harris had a lead of 49 percent to 46 percent over Trump. The change in polling is within the margin of error.

In another bad sign for Harris, just 28 percent of respondents said the U.S. as a country was headed in the right direction. Given that Harris is the incumbent vice president and such numbers are difficult for a sitting administration to overcome, that is a tough number for her.

Still, there are some good signs for Harris in the Times polling as well.

The economy remains the biggest issue in this election to voters, and Harris is narrowing the gap with Trump on whom they see as the better candidate to handle it.

Trump’s edge over Harris on that topic shrunk to 6 percentage points; he had a 13-point lead over her in last month’s New York Times/Siena College poll.

Forty-eight percent of voters view Harris favorably, according to the poll, which is up 2 percentage points from the time President Biden dropped out of the race and was replaced by his vice president.

Trump is also viewed favorably by 48 percent, up a percentage point over the same time.

Harris has a huge lead over Trump among female voters in the poll, winning 54 percent to Trump's 42 percent, but Trump has an even larger lead among male voters, 55 percent to 41 percent.

Fifteen percent of respondents said immigration, Trump's signature issue, is the most important issue to them in the election, up from 12 percent in the last poll. Trump led Harris by 11 points when asked whom voters trust on immigration.

While Biden, 81, was pushed out of the presidential race in part over concerns about his age and fitness for office, just 41 percent of voters think Trump, who is 78, is too old to be president. That's the same result as the July poll.

Additionally, the poll found that 15 percent of voters have not fully decided for whom they will vote. Among that group, Harris had an edge with 42 percent of voters, compared to Trump’s 32 percent of voters.

The poll was conducted Oct. 20-23 with 2,516 voters nationwide. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

Over the last several weeks, worries among Democrats have increased amid a series of polls that have suggested the presidential race is moving toward Trump.

With just more than a week to go before Election Day, the contest continues to hinge on the states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

Polling between the two candidates in all seven states remains incredibly tight, suggesting the race could be one of the closest in American history.

Harris has put much of her efforts into holding on to the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. If she sweeps those states, she is likely to win the Electoral College regardless of what happens in the other four battlegrounds.

In the polling averages kept by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ, Trump leads Harris by less than half a percentage point in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, while Michigan is a tie.

Trump leads by a tenth of a percentage point in those averages for Nevada, but has a lead of more than a percentage point in the other three big swing states of Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina.