Narrow Margin and High Stakes in Presidential Election
by J. Andrew Sinclair, Ph.D. & Kenneth P. Miller, J.D., Ph.D.
Harris holds a slight national lead over Trump among registered voters.
Vice President Kamala Harris leads former President Donald Trump by four points (48%-44%) in our national survey of registered voters, with remaining voters either undecided or supporting a third-party candidate. The poll, designed by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) and implemented by YouGov, was conducted between October 7-17, 2024. The poll includes 1,500 voters in a national sample and oversamples of 1,000 in CA, NY, TX, FL, and PA, for a total of 6,500 respondents. The margin of error for the full national sample is 2.14.
When undecided or third-party voters are asked whether they lean toward either Harris or Trump, Harris retains her advantage, 50%-46%. Restricting the survey to likely voters and using likely voter weights, Harris’s advantage is 51%-46% (N=6,359; MoE=2.16).
These results are largely in line with other recent surveys showing a highly competitive contest for the national presidential popular vote, with either candidate plausibly winning a majority in the Electoral College.
Only 10% of voters view neither Trump nor Harris as a threat to democracy.
American voters view the upcoming election with alarm. Nearly half of registered voters (47%) view the election of former President Trump as a threat to democracy, while 38% view Harris the same way–with fears mostly dividing along partisan lines. Voters who see both candidates as a threat to democracy (5%) tend to prefer third-party candidates or remain undecided.
Only 10% of respondents view neither candidate as a threat to democracy. This view is more common among Trump supporters than Harris supporters, and partly explains the difference between responses to this question and the question on candidate preference.
Overall, one thing most voters can agree on is that the stakes in this election are high.
Voters have a lower view of Trump’s character and competence.
As the campaigns have emphasized competing narratives about the candidates’ character and competence, Americans have come to view former President Trump somewhat more negatively than Vice President Harris on these measures. Nationally, slightly less than half (47%) of respondents agree that Harris is a person of good moral character and personal integrity, while 41% disagree. By comparison, one-third (33%) of respondents agree that Trump possesses these qualities, while a majority (54%) disagree. Meanwhile, nearly half (48%) of respondents say that, if elected, Harris would be a competent and rational decision maker, while a slightly lower percentage (44%) believe Trump would exhibit these traits in a second term.
Taken together, these three figures help illustrate broad trends in this election. Trump and Harris remain locked in a highly competitive contest, with voters polarized in their views of the candidates. Nevertheless, Harris seems to have a slight advantage in vote intention, backed in part by a lower assessment of the threat she poses to democracy and fewer intensely negative responses about her character or competence.
Partisanship largely drives assessments of candidates’ personal characteristics.
When respondents’ party identification is taken into account, perceptions of the candidates’ personal character and competence sharply divide along partisan lines. Democrats overwhelmingly view Harris as a competent person of good character and say Trump lacks these qualities. Most Republicans believe the reverse. Polarization has caused voters in opposing partisan camps to have widely divergent perceptions of the candidates’ personal attributes.
Within this overall picture, though, Harris has a slight advantage in two ways. First, among the small proportion of true independents (about 10% of the electorate, with “leaners” included among the partisans), a larger percentage hold strongly negative views of Trump’s character than of Harris’s (43% to 26%). Second, Democrats have a lower view of Trump’s personal characteristics than Republicans have of Harris’s. For example, 79% of Democrats strongly disagree that Trump is a person of good moral character and integrity, while only 58% of Republicans strongly disagree that Harris possesses these traits.
METHODOLOGY
This data is from the CMC-Rose Institute Fall 2024 Poll. The survey was designed by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) and implemented online by YouGov between October 7, 2024, and 17, 2024, with 83% of the data collected between Oct. 10-15. The total sample of 6,500 includes a national sample of 1,500 and state oversamples in CA, NY, TX, FL, and PA of 1,000 additional voters each. YouGov created the “modeled frame” (the target YouGov uses in selecting respondents for inclusion and uses for the survey weights) using the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration Supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote. The registered voter estimates use all 6,500 respondents with post-stratified weights to reflect national population characteristics. The main results use all the registered voter data; likely voter estimates require the additional step of using a turnout-intention question (from our survey) and then reweighting.
The poll’s margin of error is related not only to the sample size but also to the variation in the survey weights. Our poll of 6,500 respondents must reweight the data to account for the state oversamples, so the margin of error (2.2) is larger than it would be in a national survey of 6,500 respondents without oversamples. We collected the oversamples to be able to have high-quality state-level results in the nation’s five most populous states.
Polling is one source of data among many to use to understand elections. Readers should recognize that some voters may change their minds before election day about which candidate to support or whether or not to cast a ballot. While many want to know who will win the election, the nation’s close division means that polls cannot conclusively predict the outcome. The value of polling is connecting the observable election results to other public attitudes that are harder to observe without polling, such as the questions about competence, character, and threats to democracy detailed in this report.
The CMC-Rose Institute 2024 Poll is funded by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont McKenna College Faculty Major Grant Award, and Betsy Sinclair, Washington University in St. Louis.
For more information, visit www.roseinstitute.org/2024-poll or contact CMC-Rose Institute Poll Director J. Andrew Sinclair at asinclair@cmc.edu.