A new poll conducted entirely after last week’s debate indicates Vice President Kamala Harris holding a three-point edge over former President Trump in Pennsylvania, which is arguably the most crucial of the seven key general election battleground states.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is ahead of Trump, the GOP nominee, 49%-46% among likely voters in Pennsylvania, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll conducted Wednesday through Saturday (Sept. 11-14).
The vice president’s advantage over the former president among the 500 respondents is within the poll’s margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
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Vice President Kamala Harris, right, and former President Donald Trump shake hands during their presidential debate, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. Photographer: Doug Mills/The New York Time/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Getty Images)
The survey was conducted before Sunday’s second assassination attempt against Trump. And the poll was released on Monday, which marks 50 days until Election Day on November 5.
Both Harris and Trump have repeatedly made stops this summer in Pennsylvania, which along with Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, had razor-thin margins that decided the outcome of the 2020 election between Trump and President Biden. And the seven states will likely determine whether Harris or Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.
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But with 19 electoral votes at stake, Pennsylvania’s the biggest of the key battlegrounds. And while the campaigns and their allied super PACs are pouring resources into all seven states, more money has been spent to run spots in Pennsylvania than any of the other battlegrounds. And both sides have dished out more dollars to reserve airtime going forward in the Keystone State than any of the other swing states, according to figures from AdImpact, a top national ad tracking firm.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Bojangles Coliseum, in Charlotte, N.C., Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Pennsylvania, along with Michigan and Wisconsin, are the three Rust Belt states that make up the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall.”
The party reliably won all three states for a quarter-century before Trump narrowly captured them in the 2016 election to win the White House.
Four years later, in 2020, Biden carried all three states by razor-thin margins to put them back in the Democrats’ column and defeated Trump.
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In addition to her statewide edge over Trump, two separate USA Today/Suffolk University surveys conducted post-debate in Erie and Northampton counties – two bellwethers that have historically predicted which presidential candidate carries Pennsylvania – indicate the vice president ahead by mid-single digits.
All three surveys indicated that a widening gender gap that benefits Harris is fueling her overall advantage over Trump.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump departs a campaign event at the Central Wisconsin Airport on September 7, 2024, in Mosinee, Wisconsin. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In the statewide survey, Harris tops Trump by 17 points among female voters while the former president leads the vice president by a slimmer 12 points among men. Harris had even wider leads among women in Erie and Northampton counties.
“This is female-gender advantage on steroids,” Suffolk University Political Research director Dave Paleologos told Fox News. “In all three data sets, the women margin is around almost twice Trump’s edge among men.”
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The USA Today/Suffolk survey is the first conducted in Pennsylvania following the debate, which was held in Philadelphia. A CBS News survey in the field in early September, in the week before the debate, indicated a tied race in the Keystone State.
“It’s the one state that it’s hard to see someone losing and then still winning the presidential race,” Mark Harris, Pittsburgh-based longtime Republican national strategist and ad maker, told Fox News Digital earlier this month. “It’s clearly ground zero.”
