Kaine 51%, Cao 41%
A new Emerson College Polling/The Hill/WAVY/WRIC/WFXR/WDCW survey finds 52% of Virginia voters support Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024, while 44% support former president Donald Trump. Three percent are undecided, and one percent support someone else.
The last Virginia poll Emerson conducted in July 2024, was before Biden dropped out of the race. It found 45% of voters supporting Trump and 43% President Biden, with 11% undecided.
“Trump’s support in Virginia hasn’t shifted much since Harris became the nominee; instead, undecided voters have moved to back Kamala Harris,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said.
“Underlying demographic shifts in party affiliation and gender are driving the changes in the toplines — in July, independents broke 46% to 38% for Trump, now they break 52% to 38% for Harris. One of the most significant shifts occurred among women voters — they broke by six points for Biden over Trump in July (47% to 41%), and now break by 20 points for Harris, 58% to 38%.”
Incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine leads Republican opponent Hung Cao by ten points, 51% to 41%, with 6% undecided. Kaine has maintained a ten-point lead since the July poll, when he led Cao 49% to 39%.
The economy is the top issue for Virginia voters, followed by housing affordability (14%), threats to democracy (12%), immigration (8%), abortion (6%), healthcare (6%), and education (6%).
“Voters who find the economy to be the top issue break for Trump, 68% to 30%, while voters who say housing affordability is the top issue facing Virginia break for Harris, 76% to 15%,” Kimball added.
A plurality of Virginia voters (40%) would like to see the state’s abortion laws to be less strict, while 39% think they should remain as they are, and 22% think they should be made more strict.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin holds a 44% job approval rating, while 34% disapprove of the job he is doing as Governor. President Biden holds a 40% job approval rating among Virginia voters, while 51% disapprove of the job he is doing in office.
METHODOLOGY
The Emerson College Polling/The Hill Virginia survey was conducted September 22-24, 2024. The sample of likely voters, n=860, has a credibility interval, similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE), of +/- 3.3 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, age, party affiliation, and region based on 2024 likely voter modeling. Turnout modeling is based on information provided by voter registration/statewide demographic databases.
It is important to remember that subsets based on demographics, such as gender, age, education, and race/ethnicity, carry with them higher credibility intervals, as the sample size is reduced. Survey results should be understood within the poll’s range of scores, and with a confidence interval of 95% a poll will fall outside the range of scores 1 in 20 times.
Data was collected by contacting cell phones via MMS-to-web text, (list provided by Aristotle), and an online panel of voters provided by CINT. The survey was offered in English.
All questions asked in this survey with the exact wording, along with full results, demographics, and cross tabulations can be found under Full Results. This survey was funded by Nexstar Media.
