Trump Has No Advantage Over Harris Across Swing States

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Former President Donald Trump has no advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris across the swing-state map, marking a shift from several months of surveys against President Joe Biden and more recent data that tested him against the Democratic Party's back-up nominee.

This new race has helped shift excitement in the Democrats’ favor nationwide, and in the swing states, Harris’ backers are far more likely to be motivated in her favor than Biden’s were — reflecting the fresh energy fueling her bid.

Along with these positive metrics, Harris has gained more of swing-state voters’ trust to handle a range of issues than Biden did, though she still trails Trump on the electorate’s No. 1 issue, the economy, which the vast majority of the electorate still sees headed in the wrong direction nationwide.

State of the swing-state race

According to Morning Consult’s August surveys for Bloomberg News, Harris leads Trump among registered voters in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while the two are tied in Arizona.

It marks the first time a Democratic presidential candidate has led Trump in North Carolina, though there and in each of the other states, Harris’ advantage over Trump is inside the surveys’ margin of error, underscoring the continued tightness of the contest. 

Only in Pennsylvania did Harris see a substantial improvement in her standing since we last surveyed the swing states in late July, similarly to our findings in daily tracking at the national level, which has found only marginal movement during the same time period — and no immediate bump from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

As Harris has improved on Biden’s standing with key groups for the Democratic Party, and most importantly, the voters who backed him four years ago, she appears to be much more of a positive motivator for her own supporters than the incumbent was before he left the race.

In the aggregate, swing-state voters backing Harris now are 15 percentage points more likely than those who backed Biden in April to say they are voting for the Democratic candidate (70% to 55%) rather than against Trump. That shift was greatest in Arizona, who are now 29 points more likely to express a positive motivation than they were in the spring (75% to 46%). 

On the Republican side of the docket, Trump was already a positive motivator for the bulk of his battleground backers, though that has grown from 72% to 80%. For him, the shifts were uniform across the individual states, with his Wisconsin backers least likely to express a positive motivation — just like Harris’ are and Biden’s were in the Badger State.

Swing-state economic sentiment

Despite a shift atop the ticket, the swing-state issue matrix remains remarkably similar to where it was when Biden was the Democratic Party’s nominee.

In each of the seven states tested, voters were most likely to cite the economy as the single most important issue to their vote, albeit with sizable shares also attuned to immigration issues in Arizona and Nevada.

On each of the swing-state electorate’s top five issues, Harris has captured more voter trust against Trump than Biden had in our last survey with him in the race, most significantly on abortion but also on immigration and the economy.

Compared with our early July survey, Harris has cut Trump’s 14-point lead in voter trust to handle the economy in half, with 50% now giving their faith to the Republican nominee and 43% giving it to Harris, whose economic trust ratings are similar across much of the swing-state map.

Trump has the smallest trust advantage to handle the economy in Pennsylvania, where voters are almost as likely to trust Harris (46%) as they are him (48%), marking a 12-point improvement for Harris when compared with Biden. In Michigan, Harris improved the least on Biden’s standing, with the margin between her and Trump staying just as it was against Biden last month.

The shift in economic trust in favor of the Democrat across the 2024 battleground overall comes even as swing-state voters’ economic perceptions have hardly shifted in recent weeks. 

While swing-state voters in the aggregate have become slightly less likely since early July to see the economy as on the wrong track (72% to 69%), inflation continues to weigh on them: Two in 3 swing-state voters perceive prices for everyday goods as increasing, roughly matching the share who said the same when Biden was in the race, while just a quarter see stability and 7% see them as decreasing.

Swing-state tax policy views 

As Harris emerged on the trail, she piggybacked on a new tax policy proposal pitched by Trump as Washington begins to consider the renewal of his 2017 tax cut law: ending taxes on tipped wages. The policy is popular in Nevada, home to a large population of service and hospitality workers, but also in the other decisive states for November.  

Among six tax policy proposals tested, the most popular across the swing-state map is removing federal taxes on Social Security benefits, at 81% in the seven-state aggregate. That is followed closely by the 73% of all swing-state voters — including 74% of Georgians, Nevadans and Pennsylvanians — who support the policy first proposed by Trump. 

Ending federal taxes on tips is similarly popular among Trump’s supporters and Harris’ (75% to 72%), and has heavier backing among Hispanic and lower-earning swing-state voters than it does among white and wealthier ones.

The bottom line

Harris is in a markedly better position than Biden was at the end of his campaign — something that has been true since her bid began. At the swing-state and national levels, our surveys aren’t showing much of an immediate convention-related bump, perhaps due to the fact that the “bump” already happened when the race faced its historic shake-up in July.

In the seven battlegrounds and at the national level, Harris continues to get better buzz than Biden ever did, and she and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), are more popular than Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

That is good news for the Democrats. But while Harris has improved on voter trust related to a range of issues including the economy, our data at both the state and national levels shows Trump maintains a big opportunity to hammer his new Democratic rival when it comes to their pocketbook concerns, should he be able to credibly shift the campaign’s focus to the matter with two months to go until Election Day. 

Voters’ concerns on this front continue to reign supreme and remain overwhelmingly negative, and while Harris has shrunk the trust gap on this front relative to Biden, Trump still remains in the lead on voters’ most important issue.