Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have both lost support among swing voters since the start of October, with the Republican losing six popularity points over the past week due to "self-sabotage," according to data from social media monitoring company Impact Social.
The data showed Harris has gone from a rating of -8 with swing voters on September 27 to -17 on October 18, while Trump moved from -10 to -23 over the same period. Speaking to Newsweek, one political scientist said both the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees had become "polarizing figures" with American voters.
Trump and Harris are fighting for swing voters amidst what polling and election analysis suggest remains a tightly fought election. As of October 18, polling analytics website FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 51 percent chance of victory, ahead of Harris at 49 percent. Separately, an average compiled by data aggregator RealClearPolitics found leading bookies currently give the former president an average chance of victory of 58.5 percent, ahead of the vice president at 40.5 percent.
The Impact Social social media study concluded both Harris and Trump have seen their popularity fall with swing voters since the beginning of August, though the Democrat has recorded a steeper decline.
Harris went from having an approval rating of 10 with swing voters on August 8 to -11 on September 3. Her rating improved to -3 following September's presidential debate against Trump but continued to fall to -17 on October 18.
Trump on the other hand started with a -8 rating which fell to a low point of -27 following the debate, after which it improved to hit -10 on September 27 before falling back to -23 on October 18. Notably, according to Impact Social data, both candidates are significantly less popular with swing voters than President Joe Biden was on October 18, 2020, when the then-Democratic presidential nominee was on -4 and Trump recorded -16.
The Impact Social sentiment analysis was drawn from an algorithm that read a "statistically representative sample" of social media posts by those identified as swing voters. In 2016, Impact Social created a database of 40,000 key swing voters who matched a range of key characteristics.
In its report, Impact Social said that Trump has faced increasing scrutiny from swing voters over his age and mental acumen since 81-year-old Biden dropped out of the race in July.
The company said: "Since Biden dropped out of the race focus on mental fitness has inevitably moved towards the 78-year-old former president with independents discussing Trump's occasional loss of thought on the campaign trail. Of more concern to Team Trump will be the sharing of footage of an appearance in PA where their boss turned a political event into a music/dance festival and appeared to sway along to songs for half an hour or so. This was described by many independents as bizarre and worrying."
Impact Social attributed this "self-sabotage" by Trump to a decline in his appearance with swing voters over the past week.
However, the company also said Harris had alienated "Black and non-Black swing voters alike" by appearing to stereotype Black voters "by offering policies that would 'appeal' to their needs and lifestyle such as the liberalization of drug laws."
Speaking to Newsweek, Dafydd Townley, who teaches American politics at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., said that, unlike Biden in 2020, both Trump and Harris had failed to build up the kind of cross-party approval that appeals to swing voters.
He said: "It's unsurprising that Biden had greater appeal across the political spectrum. He had spent a great deal of his career reaching across the aisle working with Republicans to get bills passed.
"Trump and Harris have become polarizing figures and both are now trying to appeal to voters that are disgruntled with their party's representatives. The undecided voters in swing states will be crucial to this election with it likely to be a victory of fine margins in those battleground states. The number of early voters is down compared to recent years' totals which suggests that there are more undecided voters than in previous years."
Newsweek contacted representatives of the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris presidential campaigns for comment on Saturday by email outside of regular office hours.
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