A new Emerson College Polling national survey finds Vice President Kamala Harris with 49% support, and former President Donald Trump with 47% support among likely US voters. Three percent are undecided, and 1% plan to vote for someone else. In the last week of August in the 2020 Election, the Emerson national poll found President Biden similarly ahead of Trump by two points, 49% to 47%.
“The 2024 presidential race currently mirrors 2020, with the Democratic lead narrowing from four points to two in national polls,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “In 2020, Biden re-established his four-point lead in late September ahead of the first debate; now, we’ll see what impact the debate has on the trajectory of this race.”
“Suburban voters are split overall: 48% support Harris and 47% Trump,” Kimball said. “Within this lies a gender divide, suburban men breaking for Trump by 17 points, 57% to 40%, and suburban women breaking for Harris by 18 points, 56% to 38%.”
On the generic congressional ballot, 48% support the Democratic candidate while 44% support the Republican candidate.
Fifty-one percent have a favorable view of Kamala Harris, while 49% have an unfavorable view of the Vice President. Trump’s favorability is at 47%, while 53% have an unfavorable view of him.
Forty-one percent approve of the job President Biden is doing in office, while 53% disapprove of the job he is doing. Since mid-August, Biden’s approval has improved by two points, from 39% to 41%.
Last week on X, Mark Cuban asked his followers, “Whose persona and character would you like to see young children grow up to have?” When the question was asked in a scientific poll, voters showed a preference for Harris’ character and persona over Trump’s, 54% to 46%.
The economy remains the top issue to voters, at 43%, followed by immigration (15%), threats to democracy (14%), abortion access (7%), healthcare (6%), crime (4%), and housing affordability (3%).
- Those who say the economy is the top issue facing the country break for Trump, 62% to 36%, as well as immigration, 84% to 13%. Those who say threats to democracy break for Harris, 84% to 12%, along with housing and abortion.
Methodology
The Emerson College Polling national survey was conducted September 3-4, 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 affiliation, and region based on 2024 likely voter modeling. Turnout modeling is based on U.S. Census parameters, exit polls, and voter registration 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 who were pre-matched to L2 voter file data, provided by Rep Data. 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.
