Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are in effect tied heading into the final weeks of the election campaign, according to a national poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College, raising the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential debate.

Trump is up one percentage point, 48%-47%, over Harris, according to the survey released on Sunday, a difference that is within the survey’s three-percentage point margin of error, meaning a win for either candidate in the election on 5 November is well within reach.

Separately, a CBS/YouGov poll on Sunday showed a similarly tight race in key swing states, with Harris leading narrowly in Michigan (50%-49%) and Wisconsin (51%-49) and tied in Pennsylvania.

While the Trump campaign endured a relatively rocky stretch in the weeks after Democratic President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July, the most recent polling indicates his core support base is not going anywhere.

The NYT poll notably showed that voters feel they need to learn more about Harris, while their opinions on Trump are largely set. In the survey, 28% of likely voters said they needed more information about the Democratic nominee, while only 9% said the same about Trump.

The poll indicates that Tuesday’s presidential debate could be a crucial moment.

Harris will have the opportunity to give more detail of her planned policies as she spars with Trump over the course of 90 minutes. The race is so close that even a marginal boost for either candidate would be significant.

In the wake of the latest polling, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’s re-election campaign chair, said in an email to supporters on Sunday: “As vice-president Harris has said since day one, we are the underdogs in this race. We have a lot of work to do to make sure we win this November, and that will require us to continue aggressively raising money.

“The electoral college benefits the Republican ticket. Even in 2020, when the Biden-Harris ticket won more votes than any ticket in history, the election came down to about 45,000 votes across the battleground states. This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin. Every single vote will count.”

In the CBS poll, Harris enjoyed a double-digit lead over Trump when voters were asked who had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, and 71% did not like Trump’s comments about the vice-president, finding them insulting.

However, the economy and inflation were shown to be major factor in voters’ intention to back Trump over Harris. Among white, non-college educated voters, Trump was widely favoured to provide economic opportunities for working-class people (53%-27%).

The key figures from the latest NYT poll are similar to its last comparable survey, released in late July, just after Biden decided not to seek re-election. In that poll, Trump was also up one percentage point, a difference well within the margin of error.

Polls in the seven key swing states likely to determine the winner of the election have also consistently shown a razor-thin race. In the latest poll, Harris narrowly leads Trump in Wisconsin (50%-47%), Michigan (49%-47%) and Pennsylvania (49%-48%).

A separate NYT/Siena poll focusing only on those key swing states last month showed Harris leading Trump by four percentage points, 50% to 46%.

Since Harris replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket over the summer, she has hit the campaign trail hard, but has limited her unscripted appearances and kept interviews with the news media to a minimum.

With Reuters