Don’t look now, but former President Donald Trump is gaining critical momentum in October against Vice President Kamala Harris as the presidential election of 2024 draws to a close, with Trump leading the averages of swing state polls taken in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and narrowing Harris’ lead in the national popular vote, according to RealClearPolling.com.
In Arizona, Trump leads the current polling average 49.1 percent to 47.3 percent, a 1.8 percent edge.
In Nevada, Trump leads 47.6 percent to 46.9 percent, a 0.7 percent edge.
In Wisconsin, where it is very close, Trump leads 48.3 percent to 47.9 percent, a 0.4 percent edge.
In Michigan, Trump leads 48.4 percent to 47.2 percent, a 1.2 percent edge.
In Pennsylvania, Trump leads 47.9 percent to 47.1 percent, a 0.8 percent edge.
In North Carolina, Trump leads 48.4 percent to 47.9 percent, a 0.5 percent edge.
In Georgia, Trump leads 48.9 percent to 46.4 percent, a 2.5 percent edge.
It is quite a momentum shift, where a month earlier Harris led a number of those averages, and it comes in states that, with the exceptions of North Carolina (Trump won it twice) and Nevada (Trump lost it twice), Trump had won in 2016 but lost in 2020.
Nationally, a similar pattern of Trump’s momentum has emerged, with Harris leading the two-way race 49.3 percent to 48.5 percent, just a 0.8 percent edge, and the multi-candidate race 47.4 percent to 46.5 percent, a 0.9 percent edge.
Not only is that within the polls’ margins for error, they are within polls’ historic incapacity to properly gauge Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020, when polls overstated Democrats’ leads in the popular vote by about 2 points. If the same thing happens in 2024, with the national race so close, Trump might even win the popular vote in what would be a first for a Republican since 2004.
In the most recent averages, there are even a couple of polls that actually show Trump ahead, with Fox News showing Trump leading 50 percent to 48 percent and Atlas Intel showing Trump up 51 percent to 48 percent, with both polls taken mid-October.
Note, these are snapshots by polls that assume everyone who says they’re going to vote actually does go vote.
In politics there are no guarantees. Just ask Thomas Dewey, who according to polls in 1948 thought he would easily defeat Harry Truman, leading papers to pre-print the Dewey win, but when the election occurred, the opposite happened. Or Hillary Clinton, who polls said had the election in hand against Trump, but who lost.
Still, Trump’s visible momentum tells us something is afoot, with public anxieties about inflation still outpacing wages and millions of illegal immigrants still flooding the border, that there is a lot of dissatisfaction with the incumbent administration represented by Harris, whose media-contrived honeymoon appears to be over. It’s still very close, and as usual, stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
