Former President Donald Trump is slightly favored to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in the potentially crucial battleground state of Georgia, according to most recent polling results.
A poll released by Marist College on Thursday shows that the presidential candidates are locked in a dead heat among likely voters in the Peach State, with 49 percent of respondents backing both Trump and Harris. The poll surveyed 1,186 likely Georgia voters from October 17 to October 22. It has a margin of error of 3.9 percent.
Trump fared better than Harris in a poll released on Wednesday by Bloomberg News/Morning Consult. The survey of 855 likely Georgia voters from October 16 to October 20 gave the former president a narrow 1.5 percent edge over the vice president. Trump was backed by 49.9 percent of respondents, while Harris was supported by 48.4 percent. The poll has a 3 percent margin of error.
Most other recent polls of Georgia have shown Trump with a small lead, although Harris has a small advantage in some. An average of recent polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight also showed Trump leading by 1.5 percentage points as of Thursday, making Georgia one of only a few battleground states where either candidate has a lead of more than 1 point.
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Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump and Harris campaigns via email on Thursday evening.
President Joe Biden, with Harris as his running mate, won Georgia by only 11,779 votes in 2020, becoming the first Democratic ticket to carry the Peach State in a presidential election since 1992.
Trump’s small average lead over Harris in Georgia this year has been holding since mid-September. The vice president last led the state in the FiveThirtyEight average on September 7, when she was ahead of Trump by just 0.2 percent.
The former president has made some small but potentially significant recent advances in other battleground state polls. In Pennsylvania, where Harris was leading by a small margin in the FiveThirtyEight average as recently as last week, Trump was ahead by 0.3 percent on Thursday.
Michigan polls have also been more favorable toward the ex-president recently. While Harris was still up by 0.7 percent in the average as of Thursday, she had been leading the state by as many as 2.8 points just weeks earlier.
In Wisconsin, the vice president’s highest average polling lead of 3.8 percent in August had diminished to only 0.2 percent this week. Harris was leading in the FiveThirtyEight average of Nevada polls by an identical 0.2 percent margin on Thursday, down from a lead of just over 1 percent earlier this month.
Trump was leading Harris by just under 1 percent in average of polls for North Carolina on Thursday. The Republican had a more substantial but still small average advantage in Arizona, where he was leading the Democrat in the average by 1.7 points.
Nationally, Trump has made some inroads recently by taking a modest lead in some polls, although all signs continue pointing to a neck-and-neck race for the White House next month. The FiveThirtyEight average showed Harris with a 1.8 percent national lead early Thursday night.
