CNN Polls: Harris and Trump remain neck and neck in Georgia and North Carolina

Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has established a clear advantage in the presidential race in Georgia and North Carolina, a new CNN/SSRS poll finds.

Neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor former President Donald Trump has established a clear advantage in the race for the White House in two key Southern battleground states, according to new CNN polls conducted by SSRS. Likely voters in Georgia divide 48% for Trump to 47% for Harris, and in North Carolina, Harris stands at 48% to Trump’s 47%. Results are within the margin of error in both states, suggesting no clear leader in either contest. Both states are hotly contested in this year’s presidential election. North Carolina, which narrowly supported Barack Obama in 2008, has voted Republican in the past three presidential elections. In 2020, however, it was the state where Trump earned his slimmest margin of victory. Joe Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by less than 1 percentage point four years ago, becoming the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. The results suggest little movement since CNN’s late-August poll of Georgia and late-September poll of North Carolina, both of which also found no clear leader in the race. An overwhelming 95% of likely voters in each state now say they’ve made up their minds about their vote, leaving a dwindling pool of potentially movable voters, although one that’s still large enough to swing the race either way. More than half of the likely electorate in both Georgia (59%) and North Carolina (52%) say they’ve already cast their ballots, with those voters splitting narrowly toward Harris by a 7-point margin in Georgia and by 6 points in North Carolina. In both states, roughly two-thirds of Harris backers – 69% in Georgia and 67% in North Carolina – say they’re mostly voting to support her, rather than to oppose Trump. That’s a higher share than in CNN’s latest polling in the other five battleground states – Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – where the average share hovers closer to 60%. Much of the difference is due to Harris’ Black supporters in Georgia and North Carolina, about 8 in 10 of whom say their vote is largely an endorsement of the vice president. That’s the case even as Black registered voters are less likely than White registered voters in both states to describe themselves as “extremely motivated” to vote. Broad majorities of Trump backers in both states – 81% in Georgia and 75% in North Carolina – say their vote is primarily about support for the former president, rather than opposition to Harris. That’s similar to the share of Trump backers saying the same in other battleground states.