Harris regains slight lead nationally yet Electoral College holds the cards: POLL

Vice President Kamala Harris has regained a slight lead among likely voters nationally in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, albeit with the race close enough to leave the outcome of the 2024 presidential election to the uncertainties of the Electoral College.

Turnout is key. Just 2 percentage points divide Harris and Donald Trump among all registered voters, 49-47%. This goes to a slight Harris advantage among likely voters, 51-47%, with some pro-Harris groups showing a bit more propensity to vote.

Compared with earlier this month, Harris has regained a more customary Democratic advantage among Hispanic people and widened her advantage among suburban women, while remaining strong in core groups including Black people. Trump pushes back in rural areas and among non-college white men, and runs competitively among younger men.

See PDF for full results.

Issues

The candidates divide the pie in trust to handle top issues. Trump's best include immigration, with a 12-point advantage over Harris among registered voters; the economy overall, +8 points; inflation, +7; and the conflict in the Middle East, also +7. Harris responds with double-digit leads in trust to handle abortion (+15) and health care (+10); she's also 8 points ahead in trust to handle "protecting American democracy" and +6 on helping the middle class.

The economy and inflation continue as prominent concerns, with 90% and 85% of registered voters, respectively, calling these highly important in their vote. But this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, with fieldwork by Ipsos, finds a shift in intensity: The shares assigning topmost importance to the economy or inflation, calling them "one of the single most important issues" in their vote, have declined by 7 points apiece since September.

Any shift from economic concerns likely would aid Harris, given her shortfall in trust to handle the issue and dissatisfaction with the Biden administration's economic performance. President Joe Biden labors with just a 36% job approval rating; differentiating herself from him has been a challenge for Harris. She has 95% support among registered voters who approve of Biden's job performance, compared with 16% among the majority who disapprove.

Notably, as well, protecting democracy ranks nearly as high as inflation in importance, cited by 81%. That's well above the importance of immigration, which Trump has been hitting hard, and abortion, a central focus for Harris. But these reflect partisan realities: Democrats are far more apt than others to pick abortion as a top issue; Republicans, to select immigration.

Attributes

While they battle on issues, Harris continues to lead Trump on most personal attributes. Assessed head-to-head, Harris leads Trump by 11 points, 49-38%, in being seen as having the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president -- a measure on which Trump had led Biden by 31 points.

Harris' advantage widens to 29 points on having the physical health to serve effectively; she's also more apt than Trump to be seen as honest and trustworthy, by 15 points; to understand the problems of people like you, by 10 points; and to share your personal values, by 8 points.

That said, there is a remaining personal attribute on which Trump runs essentially evenly with Harris, one that may matter in an unstable world: being trusted in a crisis. Forty-three percent pick Harris on this, 41%, Trump.

These aren't the only differences in views of the candidates' attributes. As reported Friday, registered voters are twice as likely to call Trump a fascist as to say this about Harris, and 16 points more likely to think he often says things that are not true. But they're also 5 points more likely to think Harris rather than Trump makes proposals just to win votes, not that she intends to carry out.

Voter groups

Eight percent of adults (and 10% of registered voters) say they've already voted (as of early last week); a disproportionately Democratic group, they went 62-33% for Harris.

This poll finds a notable shift in vote preferences among Hispanic people, 12% of likely voters and a potentially important group given the close contest, especially in the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada. Biden won Hispanic people by 33 points in 2020, per the ABC News exit poll, and Harris leads in this group by a similar 30 points now, 64-34% -- compared with 55-43% in early October.

Trump has some offsets to Harris' gain among Hispanic people. He now is +41 points among white men without college degrees, essentially matching his showing in this group in the 2020 ABC News exit poll, and also +41 points among rural voters.

Additionally, men younger than 40 were +6 points for Harris early this month; now they're +5 for Trump. This change is not statistically significant, nor is the difference between the candidates, given sample sizes. Nonetheless, the result stands in striking contrast to preferences among women younger than 40, who favor Harris by a 34-point margin.

Trump is a slight +6 among men overall, Harris +14 among women – almost exactly the average gender gap in presidential elections since 1996. This includes a 19-point lead for Harris among suburban women, vs. a slight 10-point margin for her in this group earlier in October.

The longstanding gender gap in presidential preference reflects the fact that women are more apt than men to be Democrats -- by 13 points among likely voters in this poll. This also appears in issue importance, with women more apt than men, by double digits, to pick both abortion and health care as top issues in their vote choice.

Many of these results among groups are similar to those in the 2020 exit poll. In one difference, Harris outperforms Biden four years ago among college-educated white women. She's also strong among college graduates overall.

Another difference, though, is an important one for Trump: He's essentially even with Harris among independents, a group Biden won by 13 points in 2020, vs. a scant Harris +1 now. The candidate who's won independents has won nine of the last 12 presidential elections.

Turnout

Overall vote preferences are essentially even among the general population (Harris +1) and registered voters (Harris +2) alike. As noted, this inches to a slight Harris +4 among likely voters.

The shift toward Harris among likely voters relies in part on consolidated support among Democratic base groups, notably Black people and liberals. While Harris has a 70-point advantage among all Black people, that widens to 83 points among Black likely voters, 90-7%. Ninety-six percent of liberal likely voters support Harris, vs. 91% of liberals overall. Additionally, she goes from 53% support among all suburban women to 59% among those likely to vote. Trump, by contrast, doesn't see significant bumps in support among likely voters.

Identifying likely voters entails estimation, and it can be a moving target as the campaigns work overtime to motivate turnout for their candidate and demotivate it for their opponent.

In one potential indicator of turnout, the candidates are close in voter enthusiasm -- 88% of Harris supporters are enthusiastic about her, as are 85% of Trump's about him. In another, Harris maintains a slight edge in voter contact, with Americans overall 5 points more apt to have been contacted by her campaign than by Trump's. In the seven battleground states, though, it's a non-significant 4 points -- and the 50-47% race there remains the equivalent of a dead heat.

Methodology

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online via the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® Oct. 18-22, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 2,808 adults, including 2,392 registered voters and 1,913 likely voters. Partisan divisions among all adults are 29-29-30%, Democrats-Republicans-independents; 32-32-29% among registered voters; and 35-35-27% among likely voters.

Results have a margin of sampling error of 2 percentage points, including the design effect, for the full sample and for registered voters, 2.5 points for likely voters and 5.5 points for likely voters in the battleground states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Ipsos. See details on ABC News survey methodology here.