Donald Trump’s Chances of Beating Kamala Harris in North Carolina: Polls

Polling shows former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck and neck in the key swing state of North Carolina.
As Trump prepares to visit the Tarheel State, FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker shows that Trump is just 0.1 points ahead of Harris, 47.5 percent to her 47.4 percent, making it the closest race in the country.
Pollster Nate Silver’s tracker also shows Trump with a narrow 0.1 point lead, on 48 percent to Harris’ 47.9 percent. Meanwhile, RealClearPolitics’ polling tracker shows that Harris is 1.9 points ahead on average.
Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Harris campaign teams for comment.
North Carolina has been virtually neck and neck since the beginning of August, shortly after Harris became the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. Before that, Trump had been leading President Joe Biden in the battleground state, which Trump won in 2016 and 2020.
However, since Harris entered the race, Trump has seen his margins decrease significantly across all seven battleground states. North Carolina is now either candidate’s state to win.
Recent polls have reflected this trend, with some giving Harris a lead and others favoring Trump, while some have shown the vice president and former president are tied.
For example, the most recent poll to come out of the state, conducted by Victory Insights between September 16 and 18, gave Trump a 4-point lead among 600 likely voters. The poll had a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.
The latest Morning Consult poll, conducted between September 9 and 18, gave Harris a 2-point lead among 1,314 likely voters—a lead within the poll’s margin of error of +/-3 percentage points.
Other polls, including the latest Emerson College and Cygnal polls, conducted between September 15 and 18, have shown Trump and Harris tied among likely voters in the state.
Amid the tight race, both candidates are targeting the state, with Trump due to visit Wilmington on Saturday. According to the Trump campaign, he will hold a rally during his visit to discuss jobs, inflation, and the economy.
“Under Kamala Harris, the American Dream is slipping away and it’s hardworking North Carolinians who are paying the price. Americans still overwhelmingly want what generations before them had—a home to call their own, the ability to raise a family, and a comfortable retirement. But Kamala Harris, with her disastrous policies, is singlehandedly destroying these aspirations,” the Trump campaign said in a press release.
“Kamala Harris is failing North Carolina, plain and simple,” the release added after detailing hikes in housing costs and rent prices in the state.
According to the American Community Survey, the median home price in North Carolina grew from $193,200 in the 2017-19 survey to $280,600 in the 2020-22 survey, the seventh-largest increase in the nation in percentage terms. Other data shows prices have continued to rise since.
Both Harris and Trump have outlined plans to tackle house prices nationwide.
Harris recently unveiled a 60-second ad centered on her economic agenda, emphasizing housing and first-time homeownership.
The ad highlights key elements of her proposal, such as constructing new homes and offering down payment assistance. On the other hand, Trump has promised to cut back on regulatory barriers to accelerate the construction of new homes, among other initiatives.
North Carolina voters remain split on which candidate they trust on the issue. According to a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll conducted in August after Harris’s plans were unveiled, North Carolina voters trusted Harris to handle the housing issue over Trump by only 3 points (47 percent to 44 percent).
In the Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll, 92 percent of North Carolina voters said housing would be “very” or “somewhat” important when deciding who to vote for in November.
FiveThirtyEight’s election tracker shows that Trump and Harris have a 50 percent chance of winning in North Carolina. Silver’s forecast shows that Trump is more likely than Harris to win in the state.
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