53% have a favorable view of Harris, 49% favorable of Trump
This week’s Emerson College Polling national survey finds 49% of voters support Vice President Kamala Harris, while 48% support former president Donald Trump for president in 2024. One percent of voters plan to support someone other than the major party nominees on the ballot, and two percent are undecided. When undecided voters are asked which candidate they lean toward, Harris’s overall support increases to 50%, and Trump’s to 49%.
“Women and male voters break in near opposite directions: men for Trump, 56% to 42%, and women for Harris, 55% to 41%” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “Hispanic voters break for Harris, 61% to 35% and Black voters 81% to 12%, while white voters break for Trump 60% to 38%.”
A majority of voters (80%) say they made up their minds about which candidate to support over a month ago, while 11% made up their minds in the last month, 6% made up their minds in the past week, and 3% still have not made up their mind.
“Voters who made their decision on who to support over a month ago break for Trump, 52% to 48%, while voters who made up their mind in the last month or week break for Harris, 60% to 36%,” Kimball said. “The three percent of voters who said they could still change their mind currently favor Harris, 48% to 43%.”
On the generic congressional ballot, 48% plan to vote for the Democratic candidate while 45% support the Republican candidate. Seven percent are undecided.
Kamala Harris holds a 53% favorable rating, while 47% have an unfavorable view of the vice president. Donald Trump holds a 49% favorable rating, while 51% have an unfavorable view of the former president.
President Biden holds a 42% job approval rating, while 53% disapprove of the job the president is doing, 6% are neutral.
A plurality of voters (38%) find the economy to be the most important issue facing the nation, followed by immigration (16%), threats to democracy (13%), abortion access (9%), healthcare (7%), housing affordability (6%), and crime (4%).
When asked if the number of migrants seeking sanctuary in the United States is a crisis, a problem but not a crisis, or not a problem at all, a majority (54%) think it is a crisis, 37% think it is a problem but not a crisis, and 9% think it is not a problem at all.
Regarding the federal government’s response to this month’s hurricanes, 24% rate the response as excellent, 28% as good, 23% as not so good, and 25% as poor.
Methodology
The Emerson College Polling national survey was conducted October 14-16, 2024. The sample of likely voters, n=1,000, has a credibility interval, similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE), of +/- 3 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, age, party registration, and region based on 2024 likely voter modeling. Turnout modeling is based on voter registration and election data.
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, landlines via Interactive Voice Response (IVR) (both lists 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 Emerson College.
