With less than two weeks until Election Day in the US, CNBC’s latest national poll finds a margin-of-error presidential contest between Republican contestant Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris both nationally and in key battleground states, with Trump topping her on economic issues and Harris leading on character issues including honesty and the ‘fitness to be president.’
In CNBC’s quarterly “All-America Economic Survey,” Trump gets support from 48% of registered voters, while Harris gets 46% a 2-point spread, well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Trump’s slim 2-point edge is consistent with both the August poll by CNBC and the national NBC News poll earlier this month, which was done by the same two bipartisan polling firms and found both candidates deadlocked at 48% apiece.
In the meantime, Trump leads Harris by just 1 point, 48% to 47%, in the seven key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to an oversample of registered voters living in those states.
According to the pollsters that conduct the CNBC poll, 63% of national voters believe that their family’s income is not keeping up with the cost of living, and nearly half of voters consider inflation to be one of the key issues influencing this election.
“Even as the data show inflation has theoretically been slowing down, it has become more important in people’s minds over the course of the last three quarters, not less important,” Democratic pollster Jay Campbell of Hart Research Associates told CNBC. (Campbell conducts the poll with Republican Micah Roberts of Public Opinion Strategies.)
On the issues and presidential qualities, the poll shows Harris leading Trump by 13 points nationally on the question of which candidate has the necessary mental and physical fitness to be president, and she’s ahead by 10 points on being honest and trustworthy.
Trump, however, has a 7-point advantage nationally over Harris on which candidate better strengthens the economy in their communities. He also has an 8-point lead on dealing with taxes and businesses and a 9-point edge on the question of helping small businesses.
Additionally, according to the poll, 42% of registered voters think that a Trump victory would improve their financial situation, while 24% think that a Harris victory would do the same. According to another 29% of voters, neither option will improve their financial status.
asked which candidate would be most effective in bringing about constructive change in the nation. — Trump is preferred by 40% of nationally registered voters, compared to 42% for Harris. However, neither of those figures will be sufficient to win the presidency.
Five percent more voters stated that they believed both Trump and Harris would result in improvements. Additionally, 9% of voters expressed the negative opinion that neither Trump nor Harris would be able to implement constructive change as the next president.
Additionally, the CNBC survey shows Trump slightly more popular than Harris nationally, with Trump’s rating at 42% positive, 48% negative (-6 net rating), while Harris’ stood at 39% positive, 49% negative (-10).