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    • Harris leads Trump 2-1 among primary voters, driven by abortion
    New Jersey

    Harris leads Trump 2-1 among primary voters, driven by abortion

    Seren Anwen Posted on

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    Democrat Kamala Harris has a clear lead over Republican Donald Trump – at least among voters who have already cast their votes.

    A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll shows the vice president leading the former president 63% to 34%, nearly 2-1, among those who have already voted.

    For those who want to wait until Election Day to vote, that preference is reversed: Trump is ahead 52% to 35%.

    As some states have begun early mail-in and in-person voting, one in seven respondents said they had already voted. A third said he planned to vote early; This group supported Harris 52-39%. And nearly half said they would wait until Election Day.

    Overall, Harris was favored by 45% and Trump by 44% – a coin toss contest.

    The poll of 1,000 likely voters, conducted on landlines and cellphones Oct. 14-18, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

    Among those who have already voted, one in five named “abortion rights/women’s rights” as their most important issue, second only to the economy/inflation.

    Early voter turnout among Harris’ supporters benefits Democrats.

    “First, large Harris voter contacts are collected every day,” said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center in Suffolk. “Second, it gives the Harris campaign some time to persuade voters on Election Day.” That includes appeals to “some previously reliable Democratic voters who have defected in recent weeks, such as young black and Latino men.”

    In 2020, as early voting surged due to the COVID-19 pandemic, partisan disagreements over when people should vote sometimes led to misleading perceptions on election night. In some states, early votes cannot be counted until Election Day. That means the early results, based only on in-person voting, created a “red mirage” in Pennsylvania and elsewhere — that is, Trump received large and misleading leads before the early votes were taken into account.

    Four years ago, Democrats were about twice as likely to cast mail-in ballots as Republicans, in part because Trump claimed without evidence that early voting was fraudulent. This year, the GOP is doing more to urge its supporters to vote early.

    The early votes for Harris also give Democrats a setback.

    Those who have already voted say they support Democratic congressional candidates by 63% to 33%. Overall, the poll showed a split in the general congressional vote between 47% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans.

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    Seren Anwen
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