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For the past year, Bloomberg News and Morning Consult have been polling likely voters in the seven key swing states that could decide the election. Ninety three Electoral College votes hang in the balance of these states, and if the race is close in a few of those, it could be days before we know who our next president is. We have the results from our final poll of those voters, and according to Bloomberg Senior editor Wendy Benjaminson, who's been leading the polling effort.
Well, as we say in Texas, where I've lived tighter than the tick, this thing is a dead hete.
Today on the show, unpacking the results of the final Bloomberg News Morning Consult poll of swing state voters before election day, Wendy and I dig into what the data can and can't tell us about how these pivotal voters are feeling of the candidates and the number one issue on voter's minds, the economy, and how it could all shape who wins Donald Trump or Kamala Harris from Bloomberg's
Washington Bureau, This is the Big Take DC podcast. I'm Salamosen, Wendy, can you tell me how close is the race looking in these key states. Based on what we've learned, it.
Is forty nine forty nine Trump and Harris across the seven swing states. It is the percentage of likely voters who say that's the candidate they're going to vote for. So if you look at individual states, it varies from zero point five percentage point difference to three point one percentage point advantage for Kamala Harris in Michigan. But even that Michigan number is within the margin of error for the individual state polls. So it is anyone's guess what's
going to happen in a couple of weeks. And the reason we picked these seven swing states, and they are Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and that very important so called blue wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. No Democrat can win without Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which is why we call it the blue Wall. So those seven swing states are the most important. And what I want to remind our listeners is that a
poll is a snapshot in time. This is how swing state voters felt about the race when we went in the field. It does nothing to predict what will happen two weeks from now?
All Right, So, Wendy Harris entered the race late, and she started with a lot of momentum. We're running the corner to election day. Where does that momentum for Harris stand now?
Well, in July when she entered the race, there was this huge sigh of relief from Democratic voters. And what we're seeing in the last two poles September on October is that she may have hit her high water mark. She may have hit the point where it's starting to flatten out a little bit. People like her forty nine percent of people like her in some polls it's fifty or fifty one. Again, that's all within the margin of error.
About half the electorate is still enthused about Kamala Harris, but it doesn't seem to be getting that tiny little push above where she could be a clear winner in these states.
So we've been talking over the last few months about who swing state voters trust more to handle the economy. Last month, Trump was leading Harris by four percentage points. What have we seen this month?
What we have seen is one the most static electorate I have ever seen overall in the question of who do you trust more to handle the economy? Broadly? Last month there was a four point difference between the two of them. This month there is a five point difference, but it over the course of the poll. It has not changed since Kamala Harris got into the race. It's been a four or five or six point difference away
advantage Trump. Voters trust Donald Trump to handle the economy, but on items such as housing and healthcare, voters trust Kamala Harris more. And I think that's because she has talked about it more on the trail. She has focused on this caring economy, this opportunity economy, and this is a way too as she always talks about help the middle class, where Donald Trump sort of talks about both ends of the spectrum. Where she talks about the middle
class more. And they are most worried about the cost of housing, the cost of healthcare, and the cost of goods, basically inflation, where they are tied.
Have we learned anything from Bloomberg and Morning Console polls on what voters want from the next president.
We can glean from this that people certainly want the price of goods to go down. They are very worried about inflation, more than anything else. They are very worried about the cost of housing, and they're very worried about the taxes they pay. They want the next president to fix that, and we can glean that from reading between the lines.
Coming up, Wendy and I talk about what swing state voters are thinking about third party candidates and how Trump's latest polling numbers compare to this point in the twenty sixteen and twenty twenty election cycles. I'm talking with Wendy Benjaminson about the results of the final Bloomberg News Morning Consult swing state poll ahead of election Day. Wendy, do the results in any individual swing states jump out at you?
They are so close that it's really hard to tell. Trump is doing better in Arizona and Nevada than we expected, partly because he is doing better with Latino voters than we expect it. One of the things that Democrats keep missing in elections is that Latino voters are no more pro immigration, pro open border than any other American ethnic group. Once you are here, or you are born here, immigration becomes the same issue that it is for everyone else.
And Trump has used this very dark, very scary rhetoric about deporting immigrants, and it's speaking to some voters, and so that's where he seems to be getting his support from in those states, and that will help him a lot.
So when at the beginning of this year, everyone was talking about a third party, right, but there are third party candidates and you can write in someone's name as well. Do we have a sense of whether voters are writing in or choosing a third party candidate and whether that could hurt either Trump or Harris.
So the short answer is no. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, Libertarian Chase Oliver, they're polling at less than one percent, so across all seven swing states, even in this razor thin election, I don't think the third party candidates, especially now that URFK Junior is out of the race and working for Trump, I don't think that's going to have an impact.
Voters can sometimes be motivated to vote for a candidate, but sometimes they're motivated to vote against someone that they just don't want to see an office. Did our polling tell us about who voters are more eager to vote against.
Yes, we asked that question. Is your vote more for Kamala Harris or is it against Donald Trump or the converts of that, and the answer was that many more people. Still, only twenty seven percent of Kamala Harris voters said they are voting against Donald Trump, where about eighteen percent said they were voting against Kamala Harris when they cast a
ballot for Donald Trump. And this probably reflects Harris's outreach to voters like suburban women who are Republicans or other Republicans who are just turned off by Donald Trump, who who are more traditional conservative. She may be drawing some of those. You know, she spent a lot of time campaigning with Liz Cheney, daughter of the Vice president and a very conservative former congressman. She is trying to draw in those disaffected Republicans and that number may reflect that.
One of the things that struck me about the poll and what voters want is that we also asked about the character traits of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, like do you think they are? We gave a list mentally fit, A strong leader, too old, cares about someone like me, honest was another one sort of getting at their character in every character issue except a strong leader. Kamala Harris
was ahead of Trump. That they think she is generally a better person raised right, you know, and they think that Trump is dishonest, too old, not mentally fit, and yet they trust him more to handle these top issues like the economy and immigration more than they do Kamala Harris, you told.
Me earlier how Trump's current numbers compare to what we saw in twenty sixteen at this stage when he beat Clinton. Can you tell me how do the numbers we have today stack up to where he was at this time in the race in twenty twenty when he lost to Biden.
Well, it's a little difficult because those polls were national. But at this point nationally in twenty twenty, Joe Biden was up eight points, and again in twenty sixteen, Hillary Clinton was up twelve points nationally. The national polls i've seen have Harris up to maybe one or two points nationally. So this is an even tighter race, and I just want to reemphasize that this doesn't mean this is the
way the race is going to turn out. We have a large number of poll respondents any pollster does who are embarrassed or really don't want to say who they're voting for, so they'll say what they think the caller wants to hear, and so there's always that wiggle room in the polls. But we have waited these results for all sorts of demographic issues. We have waited them for income, we have waited them for race, for religion, for age,
for generation, for how they voted before. And you know, we're fairly confident that this is an accurate snapshot of how swing state likely voters feel today. But that's as far as I'll go. Yeah, all right, thank you so much, Thank you.
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from Bloomberg News. I'm Salaia Mosen. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was edited by Aaron Edwards. It was mixed by alex U Kira and fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Naomi Shaven, who also edited this episode, is our senior producer. Wendy Benjaminson and Elizabeth Ponso provide editorial direction. Nicole Beamster Bower is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Please follow and review The Big Take DC
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