Flurry of polls shows Harris with slight lead over Trump in tight race in Pa.

With less than seven weeks to go before Election Day, a majority of polls released this week show Vice President Kamala Harris has eked out a slight lead in the key swing state of Pennsylvania.

Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, gained some favor among Pennsylvanians over the last couple of weeks in what’s turning out to be a horse race for the White House against former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

Eight polls of Keystone State voters were released this week. Five showed Harris in the lead, one indicated the candidates tied and a pair gave Trump a slight edge.

Two of the polls showing Harris up by more than 4 percentage points — those by Quinnipiac University and New York Times/Siena Research — give Harris a lead outside the margin of error.

Of high-quality Pennsylvania polls released since Harris entered the race in late July through Thursday, the vice president holds about a 2-point lead over Trump.

OK, let's recap what we got from Pennsylvania since Monday:

Quinnipiac: Harris up 51/46 [it's 51/45 in H2H]
NYT: Harris up 49/45
Suffolk: Harris up 49/46
F&M: Harris up 49/46
WaPo: Harris up 48/47 [it's 48/48 in H2H]
Marist: tied 49/49
Emerson: Trump up 48/47
IA: Trump up 50/48 https://t.co/1v7rKPbUVc

— Taniel (@Taniel) September 19, 2024

While polling is currently giving Harris the edge, Shippensburg University professor Alison Dagnes said signs still show a tight race with no clear leader.

“It’s still too close to call,” Dagnes said. “We all know it is going to be a close election, and the fight will be in the margins.”

Pennsylvania, with its 19 Electoral College votes, is the biggest swing state in the nation. The commonwealth’s last two presidential elections have been decided by about one percentage point.

Here are the Pennsylvania polls released recently:

• Quinnipiac: Harris up 51/46. Taken between Sept. 12-16
• NYT/Siena: Harris up 49/45. Taken between Sept. 11-16
• Suffolk University/USA Today: Harris up 49/46. Taken between Sept. 11-14
• Franklin & Marshall University: Harris up 49/46. Taken between Sept. 4-15
• Washington Post: Harris up 48/47. Taken between Sept. 12-16
• Marist College: Harris and Trump tied 49/49. Taken between Sept. 12-17
• Emerson/The Hill: Trump up 48/47. Taken between Sept. 15-18
• Insider Advantage: Trump up 50/48. Taken between Sept. 14-15

Sam Chen, an Allentown-based political strategist who works on local and state campaigns, agrees the race is still too close to call even with some positive movement in Harris’ direction.

“I think these polls show it is dead heat in the state,” Chen said, noting that most were within the margin of error. “And that means the Electoral College is still up for grabs.”

Snapshot, not prediction

Dagnes said it’s likely the Vice President’s strong debate performance and extensive campaigning in Pennsylvania have helped her poll numbers improve.

Harris and running mate Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, spent significant time in Pennsylvania over the last few weeks. They barnstormed across the Pittsburgh region, with one or both making campaign stops in the Strip District, Johnstown, Moon Township, Beaver and Fayette counties.

The vice president made Downtown Pittsburgh her debate prep headquarters, spending five days holed up in the Omni William Penn hotel before heading to the televised showdown with Trump in Philadelphia on Sept. 10.

“The local news coverage showing Harris was here, it makes voters feel tended to,” Dagnes said. “Donald Trump’s secret sauce has always been to convince people they are being ignored, and Harris is here to tell them they are not ignored.”

Dagnes said it’s normal for different polls to show diverging results among the same electorate. The eight polls sampled answers from between 800 and 1,600 respondents each.

Pollsters are talented at weighting respondents according to the state’s demographic make-up, Dagnes said.

She cautioned that polls shouldn’t be taken as predictors.

Nearly 7 million Pennsylvanians voted in the 2020 presidential race.

“Polling is not a predictor, but a snapshot,” Dagnes said. “Polls are an explanation of a current moment in time in the race.”

Warming up?

Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said that Harris is benefiting from a rising approval rating among Pennsylvanians.

The Quinnipiac poll shows that 48% of likely Pennsylvania voters have a favorable opinion of Harris, while 43% have an unfavorable opinion of her.

Harris has turned that upside-down since August, when she was in the negative. Then, 46% of likely voters in the state had a favorable opinion of her, and 48% saw her as an unfavorable.

Despite enjoying immense favor in pockets throughout Pennsylvania, Trump has overall remained unpopular in the state.

Of likely voters, 44% have a favorable opinion of him, while 53% see him as unfavorable. That’s unchanged from August.

“Favorability, that catch-all for what voters think about candidates from policy to personality to promise, tips Harris’ way since we last polled Pennsylvanians,” Malloy said in a statement. “A post-debate shift, though small, suggests voters are warming up to her.”

At this moment, Dagnes said, Harris’ campaign strategy has been more effective than Trump’s.

Dagnes noted how Harris is reaching out to Pennsylvanians who live in places not considered modern liberal strongholds in an effort to claw back voters who have gone for GOP presidential candidates over the last decade.

As part of that effort, she and Walz have campaigned in Beaver County, Johnstown, and Fayette County.

Team Trump’s PA tour

Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, meanwhile, have been doing their own barnstorming across Western Pennsylvania.

They’ve made stops in Johnstown, Erie and Lower Burrell, though not with the same frequency as Harris and Walz.

More recently, Trump has been focused on trying to rally his usual conservative supporters by spreading fear about Haitian immigrants living in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Dagnes said.

Trump’s comments during the debate with Harris about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio eating people’s dogs and cats — amplified by Vance — have been debunked. But they have led to bomb threats against schools in the community and given rise to an endless supply of memes skewering the former president.

“She is fighting a campaign of persuasion, and Trump is fighting a campaign of mobilization,” Dagnes said. “She is trying to expand her reach, and he is trying to encourage and activate his supporters.”

Kush Desai, a spokesman for PA Team Trump, said that pollsters, the media and political intellectuals are underestimating Trump’s support.

“Americans have a clear choice this election: another four years of rising prices, open borders, and incompetence under Kamala Harris or a return to the peace, prosperity, and stability of the Trump administration,” Desai said in a a statement. “The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is going to prove itself, once again, to be Trump Country in November.”

Chen, the Allentown strategist, said the best indicator to gauge the state of the race is not individual polls, but comparing polls to their past counterparts.

Quinnipiac University’s recent poll, for instance, should be compared to its Pennsylvania poll last month, Chen said.

That comparison shows Harris gaining 3 percentage points on Trump between August and September.

Chen said if that holds or continues to trend towards Harris, then Trump could be in trouble.

Casey-McCormick

The flurry of Pennsylvania polls also took the temperature of the state’s high-profile U.S. Senate race.

Democratic incumbent Bob Casey of Scranton is up against former hedge fund CEO and Republican Dave McCormick of Pittsburgh.

Casey leads in seven of eight of the recent polls. His advantage ranges from 4 points in the Suffolk University/USA Today poll and Emerson College polls to 9 points in the NYT/Siena Research and Quinnipiac University polls.

A Washington Post poll has Casey and McCormick tied at 48% each head to head, but in a match-up where third-party candidates are included, Casey leads 47-46 over McCormick.

Dagnes said Casey has been leading the race the entire time by an average of about 4 points, and she said the recent polling places the race in about the same spot.

Chen said that McCormick is not where he needs to be to unseat Casey, a three-term incumbent. Chen said McCormick probably needs to be outperforming Trump in polls, and the polls are showing the opposite.

He said the last time Republicans won a U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania was in 2016, when Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Lehigh, outperformed Trump on way to reelection.

Here are the Pennsylvania senate race polls released recently:

• Quinnipiac: Casey up 52/43. Taken between Sept. 12-16
• NYT/Siena: Casey up 49/40. Taken between Sept. 11-16
• Franklin & Marshall University: Casey up 48/40. Taken between Sept. 4-15
• Marist College: Casey up 52/47. Taken between Sept. 12-17
• Emerson/The Hill: Casey up 47/42. Taken between Sept. 15-18
• Insider Advantage: Casey up 49/44. Taken between Sept. 14-15
• Suffolk University/USA Today: Casey up 47/43. Taken between Sept. 11-14
• Washington Post: Casey and McCormick tied 48/48. Taken between Sept. 12-16