Major poll suggests Trump likely to flip Pennsylvania back from blue to red

By 
 November 1, 2024

Pennsylvania has become the epitome of an electoral swing state, as former President Donald Trump flipped it from blue to red in 2016 only for President Joe Biden to flip it back from red to blue in 2020.

The Keystone State and its 19 critical electoral votes appear poised to be flipped once again from blue to red as a major poll shows Republican nominee Trump with a lead over his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, Breitbart reported.

The lead for Trump in that particular poll is a stunning reversal and bad news for Harris, who just a month and a half ago had a solid and seemingly insurmountable advantage in the important battleground state.

Pennsylvania has swung toward Trump

Quinnipiac University recently polled more than 2,000 likely voters across Pennsylvania and found that former President Trump was ahead of VP Harris by two points, 49-47%, in a head-to-head matchup, which was just barely within the poll's 2.1% margin of error.

That lead for Trump may not appear to be much at a glance but it is actually significant in that it highlights a substantial shift of the state's voters away from Harris and toward Trump over the past several weeks.

Consider that in mid-September, the same pollsters had Harris ahead by five points, 51-46%, but her lead slipped to just two points in early October, 49-47%, and has now been flipped to Trump's advantage by the same score -- a swing of seven points in Trump's favor in nearly as many weeks.

Trump better than Harris on favorability and the major issues

The Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania voters also contained more bad news for VP Harris aside from the topline number that gave the advantage to former President Trump less than a week before Election Day.

On the question of candidate favorability, and in spite of the incessant attacks and smears against him, Trump fared better than Harris among likely voters, with 46% to her 44%, while both were tied with 49% unfavorability.

In terms of the developing gender gap, Trump performed better among men, 57-37% -- a shift toward Trump from the early October result of 52-41% -- while Harris was stronger than Trump with women voters, 55-39%, which was essentially the same as the 55-40% margin a couple of weeks ago.

As for which candidate was more capable of handling the major issues, Trump was up over Harris on managing the Middle East crisis, 52-42%; the economy, 53-43%; immigration, 54-42%; and, rather ironically, given all of the Democratic howling about the supposed threat Trump poses to democracy, voters believed he would do better than her at preserving democracy, 49-47%.

Trump leading in most of the polls

The two-point advantage for former President Trump over VP Harris in Pennsylvania is slightly ahead of RealClearPolling's average of polls for the state, which currently shows him with a 0.5-point lead.

Notably, on the same day in the 2020 and 2016 elections, respectively, President Biden was ahead by 3.6 points and barely eked out a victory while failed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was up by 3 points and ultimately lost by a slim margin.

As for the broader national average, RCP currently has Trump with a 0.3-point lead over Harris -- Biden was ahead by 7.9 points in 2020 and Clinton was up by 1.6 points in 2016 -- but, perhaps more importantly, the polling aggregates showed Trump with the lead in five of the seven swing states -- Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania -- while Harris held marginal leads in Michigan and Wisconsin.

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