North Carolina 2024 Trump-Harris Polls: Trump Leads By 3 Points In Latest Survey

Trump is up 59% to 47% in a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Monday, still within the 3.9-point margin of error, while a Quinnipiac poll of likely voters released Wednesday found Harris leading 49% to 47%, a reversal of Trump’s 49%-47% lead two weeks ago.

Two other recent polls found Trump with an edge: He led 46%-45% in a Wall Street Journal poll published Oct. 11 that includes third-party candidates, and led 49%-48% in an Emerson College poll out Oct. 10, after Harris led 49%-48% in the group’s September survey.

Last month, Trump led by two points in a survey of likely voters taken Sept. 25-29 by the Washington Post, while Harris led by two points in a Bloomberg/Morning Consult survey released Sept. 26 and the two were tied in a CNN/SSRS poll released Sept. 27.

The Cook Political Report moved North Carolina from “lean Republican” to a “toss up” in late August, writing that the state “looks more competitive than ever” since Harris’ entrance into the race, while Cook’s latest survey released earlier this month shows Harris and Trump tied, after Harris led by one point here in August.

If Harris wins the state, she has a 91.3% chance of winning the election, according to political analyst Nate Silver’s Voter Power Index, which found Trump would have an 81.2% chance of winning the electoral college if he wins North Carolina.

Harris has a 38.6% chance of winning North Carolina, similar to her odds in Georgia, and as of August, there was an 86% chance the states will vote together, according to Silver’s model, which considers various demographic characteristics, including age, income, race and education level and the states’ voting history in the past two elections.

North Carolina’s shift to the left has largely been credited to a population increase among potential voters who typically back Democrats—including the highly educated—especially from a 5.6% increase since 2020 near the “research triangle” area of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, according to the Brookings Institution.

That area hosts three major research universities—Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina University—that have also sparked related industries in high tech and the life sciences, and made it the tenth-fastest growing area in the country, according to Brookings.

And the overall percentage of North Carolinians with a bachelor’s degree—a Democratic-leaning demographic—has also increased by 1.4 million since 1990, according to a study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.