A new poll shows Donald Trump and Kamala Harris tied in two battleground states and close behind in two others.
A Fox News poll released Friday showed the 78-year-old former president leading the 59-year-old vice president by one percentage point in Wisconsin, with Trump’s approval rating at 50 percent and Harris’s at 49 percent.
Meanwhile, Ms Harris leads Mr Trump by 6 percentage points in heavily Democratic Minnesota (52% to 46%), where a Republican has won the presidential election just once since 1960, when a majority of Minnesotans supported Richard Nixon over George McGovern in the 1972 election.
Polls show that in Michigan and Pennsylvania, both candidates are tied at 49% support.
The survey was conducted from July 22-24, after President Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Ms Harris, and was conducted among more than 1,000 registered voters in each of four battleground states.
Voters in all four states said the top issue in the 2024 presidential election was the economy, followed by immigration and abortion. Trump received more support than Harris among voters who prioritized the economy and immigration, but the vice president received more support than the Republican candidate among voters who said abortion was the top issue.
The poll found that Trump is performing as well or better in a head-to-head matchup with Harris than he did in 2020, and that support for the vice president in four battleground states is higher than Biden, 81, did in April.
When third-party candidates are included in the poll, Trump leads by two points in Michigan (45% to 43%) and Harris leads by two points in Pennsylvania (45% to 43%). The two candidates are tied in Wisconsin at 46% each, and Harris maintains a six-point lead in Minnesota (47% to 41%).
All four states went to Biden in the 2020 election. Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the 2016 election.
Biden suspended his reelection bid on Sunday after a dismal performance in a June debate raised questions about his intellectual acuity and fitness for the job, raising concerns within Democrats about whether he could beat Trump in November.
