Former President Donald Trump has erased Vice President Kamala Harris' narrow lead, leveling the extraordinarily tight presidential race, according to a national poll published on Saturday.
With 10 days until Election Day, the race between Trump and Harris rests on razor-thin margins, with the outcome largely depending on key battleground states.
Most recent polls indicate growing support for Trump and a decline for the vice president, who had previously been consistently leading in national popular vote polls. Trump has pulled ahead of Harris in four recent major national polls for the first time since early August.
A new Emerson College Polling national survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted between October 23 and 24 finds Harris and Trump to be deadlocked at 49 percent. Meanwhile, 1 percent is undecided and another 1 percent plans to support a third-party candidate. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
"Male voters are breaking for Trump by 13 points, 55 percent to 42 percent, a larger margin than in 2020, while women break for Harris by ten points, 54 percent to 44 percent, underperforming Biden's support in 2020," Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said.
When respondents were asked who they expected to become president, regardless of their personal support or vote, majority said Trump—50.4 percent to Harris' 48.5 percent.
Harris edges ahead of Trump in favorability, with an even split among respondents—50 percent view her favorably and 50 percent unfavorably. By comparison, 49 percent hold a favorable view of Trump, while 51 percent view him unfavorably.
The poll aligns with a trend of increasing support for Trump in the days leading up to the election. Emerson College Polling, which showed Harris with between a 1 to 4 percentage point lead over Trump as of August, now shows that lead has entirely disappeared.
In the previous rendition of the poll, conducted from October 14 to 16, Harris had a slight 1 percent lead on Trump, 49 to 48 percent. The survey of 1,000 likely national voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Steven Cheung, Trump's campaign spokesperson, previously told Newsweek in an email about tightening polls, "[Former] President Trump is out working Kamala Harris, and voters know America can no longer survive under Kamala's destructive policies of soaring inflation, an out-of-control border, and rampant crime terrorizing every community."
Newsweek has reached out to Harris' campaign for comment via email on Saturday.
In a similar Emerson College/NewsNation national poll of 1,121 likely voters conducted just ahead of the 2020 presidential election, from October 25 and 26, 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden led Trump by 5 percentage points, 50 to 45 percent.
At the time, voters were split on who they expected to take the Oval Office, with Trump slightly edging ahead of Biden, 42 to 41 percent. Biden ultimately secured the presidency. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
Other national polls show a comparable electoral scenario to Emerson College's latest poll. A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Friday paints a similar picture, with Trump and Harris deadlocked at 48 percent support each. The poll was conducted among 2,516 registered voters over the phone between October 20 and October 23, and has a margin of error of 2.2 percent.
The previous edition of the Times/Siena College poll, conducted among 3,385registered voters between September 29 and October 6 with a 2.2 percent margin of error, showed Harris with a 2-percentage point lead over the former president. Harris was supported by 48 percent of voters while Trump was backed by 46 percent.
A recent Wall Street Journal poll of 1,500 registered voters found that the former president leads Harris by 2 percentage points, 47 to 45 percent. Trump's lead falls within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
The poll, conducted between October 19 and 22, found that 3 percent of respondents are undecided, and 2 percent still support Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate who dropped out of the race in August. The poll also shows a decline in favorability for Harris, while Trump's favorability has increased.
Nationwide and aggregate polls gauge voter sentiment, but individual states and their Electoral College votes ultimately decide the presidential election. To win the presidency, a candidate must secure 270 electoral votes, which doesn't always align with the national popular vote.
On Friday, pollster Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin forecast gives Trump a 53.4 percent chance of winning the presidency, compared to Harris' 46.3 percent. Meanwhile, polling aggregate FiveThirtyEight predicts a similar outcome, with its Saturday forecast showing Trump with a 53 percent chance of winning the election, and Harris 47 percent.
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