A new poll of likely voters shows former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala by one percentage point in the battleground states of Georgia and Arizona, and they are tied in North Carolina.
A Marist College battleground state survey found Trump leading Harris 50% to 49% among likely general election voters in the Peach and Copper states.
In North Carolina, the former president and vice president were tied at 49% with voters.
Polls show that Harris, 59, is struggling to maintain the victory margin that Joe Biden won among independents and black voters in the 2020 election, but is performing well among white voters.
Harris is beating Trump among Georgia's independents 51% to 46%, but exit polls show Biden, 81, won independents there by at least 9 percentage points in 2020.
Arizona independents also favor Harris over Trump, 51% to 47%, but they also favored Biden by 9 points in 2020.
Surprisingly, Harris is trailing Biden by 24 percentage points among Arizona's Hispanics and is losing out to Trump, 49 percent to 51 percent.
Majorities of white voters in Georgia (66%) and Arizona (51%) support Trump, but nearly all black voters in Georgia support Harris (86%).
The candidates remain competitive among most generations, except for millennials and Gen Z, who support Harris.
According to exit polls, North Carolina independents were evenly split between Trump and Harris at 48% each, but Biden won this demographic by 4 percentage points in 2020.
Black voters in the state support Harris over Trump by 86% to 13%, but Biden won 92% of the black vote in North Carolina four years ago.
The 45th president is supported by 59% of white voters in the Tar Heel State, with 40% of those backing Harris.
On Election Day 2024, only 3% of voters are still undecided about their candidate of choice.
“North Carolina, with its 16 electoral votes, is the backup plan for both the Harris and Trump campaigns after the fierce battle in Pennsylvania,” said Dr. Lee M. Miringoff, president of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion Research. “North Carolina is so close, the state's five regions are lined up almost exactly as they were four years ago. It's as if the Biden era and the 2024 campaign never happened.”
Still, the president may be holding his former vice presidential running mate back, with 54% of adults surveyed in the state disapproving of Biden's job in the Oval Office, compared with 42% who approve.
By issue, voters in Georgia (34%) and North Carolina (32%) are most concerned about inflation as an election issue, while Arizona voters are most concerned about preserving democracy (27%), followed by inflation (26%).
Immigration was the third most common issue cited by voters in all three states, and all three have seen a decline in concern since March.
Polling questions consistently show that voters view Trump, 78, as a strong leader and agent of change, while Harris is seen by voters as the candidate who most shares their values and is trustworthy.
But in North Carolina, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein is leading his Republican opponent Mark Robinson by 11 points, 54% to 43%, according to the poll.
Nearly half of North Carolinians (48%) also have an unfavorable opinion of Robinson.
Robinson's campaign staff resigned en masse over the weekend after a CNN report revealed that their boss had made lewd comments under a false name on a pornography site a decade ago, calling him a “black Nazi.”
President Trump endorsed Robinson for governor during the Republican primary but has remained silent about him since the scandal.
The North Carolina poll was conducted Sept. 19-24 and surveyed 1,605 adults in the state, of whom at least 1,348 were considered likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points to 3.7 percentage points.
