Final Yahoo News/YouGov election poll: Trump pulls even with Harris at 47% — but will 'enthusiasm' favor Democrats?
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are now tied nationally with just days to go until Election Day, according to the final Yahoo News/YouGov poll of the cycle.
The three previous Yahoo News/YouGov surveys found Harris with a slight lead over Trump among registered voters, ranging from one point after the Democratic National Convention in August to five points after their Sept. 10 debate (when third-party candidates were factored in).
Now Harris (47%) and Trump (47%) are tied on the same question for the first time since Harris declared her candidacy on July 21.
Other trial-heat variations yield the same result. Among likely voters, for instance, Harris and Trump are also tied (at 48%) when pitted against the full field. In a two-way contest, they are tied among registered voters (at 48%) and statistically tied among likely voters (49% Harris vs. 48% Trump) as well.
In other words, the race has only gotten closer as the clock ticks down — at least according to the latest data.
The tightest election ever?
The new Yahoo News/YouGov survey of 1,710 U.S adults, which was conducted from Oct. 29 to 31, aligns with nonpartisan polling averages showing Harris with a one-point lead nationally — and Trump with a slight advantage across the key battleground states.
Even the two tightest presidential contests of the last 65 years — John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon in 1960 and George W. Bush vs. Al Gore in 2000 — weren’t this tight heading into the homestretch.
If the polls turn out to be accurate, 2024 could be the closest presidential election in modern U.S. history.
But that’s a big if. The final polls rarely nail the final popular vote; since 1972, they’ve been off — in one direction or the other — by about 2.5 percentage points, on average. This year, pollsters could be underestimating Trump again, like they did in 2016 and 2020 — or if the adjustments they’ve made since then have overcorrected for prior Trump-era misses, they could be underestimating Harris. Both candidates are just “a normal polling error away from a blowout,” as ABC News recently put it. (The Yahoo News/YouGov poll has a margin of error of 2.8%.)
As a result, the kind of consensus that usually emerges during the final days of a hard-fought campaign — that one candidate is the frontrunner, if only by a little; that the other trails, but could come from behind to win — has given way to uncertainty and confusion. Partisans are left scouring the crosstabs for signs that their preferred candidate has an edge.
So does the new Yahoo News/YouGov poll have anything to offer them? Perhaps.
Bright spots for Harris
For Democrats, “enthusiasm” may represent the biggest ray of hope.
Overall, the share of registered voters who say they are “extremely enthusiastic” about voting in the 2024 presidential election (45%) is lower than the share who said the same right before Election Day 2020 (57%), according to the final Yahoo News/YouGov poll of that cycle.
At the same time, more Harris (50%) than Trump voters (46%) now say they are extremely enthusiastic about casting their ballots. Last time around, Trump (63%) led Biden (56%) on this question.
The enthusiasm numbers could be important for two reasons.
First, analysts think that “turnout” — i.e., which voters actually vote and which voters don’t — could be unusually important in 2024. In recent years, Democrats have improved the most among higher-turnout groups (like senior citizens and college-educated white people) while Trump has made his biggest gains among lower-turnout groups (like young men, Black men and Latinos).
As a result, Trump will probably perform better if overall turnout is relatively high (because it means his more casual voters have shown up); Harris will probably perform better if overall turnout is relatively low (because it means her more committed voters have carried the day). The overall drop in enthusiasm from 2020 to 2024 could be an early indicator of lower turnout.
Second, it’s always beneficial to be on the right side of an “enthusiasm gap.” It might not be enough to overcome a big deficit in vote preference; Trump lost in 2020 despite leading Biden on this measure. But if Harris’s voters are more motivated to turn out than Trump’s, it could help break a tie.
To that point, Harris leads — by slim margins — on other measures of turnout as well:
73% of Harris voters say they are extremely or “very” enthusiastic about voting for president this year, compared to 68% of Trump voters.
94% of Harris voters say they have either voted early or will “definitely” vote, compared to 91% of Trump voters.
86% of Harris voters say they care a lot about who wins, compared to 84% of Trump voters.
Harris also leads Trump 70% to 26% among late-breaking voters — the quarter of the electorate who say they made up their mind about which candidate to support in September or October. And 4% of Trump voters say they could “still change [their] mind between now and the election,” versus just 1% of Harris supporters.
As Harris campaign adviser — and former Barack Obama campaign manager — David Plouffe tweeted Friday, “it’s helpful, from experience, to be closing a Presidential campaign with late deciding voters breaking by double digits to you and the remaining undecideds looking more friendly to you than your opponent.”
Bright spots for Trump
Trump’s biggest asset right now is simple. While he was trailing Harris nationally after their Sept. 10 debate, he’s no longer trailing today. And because the Electoral College skews Republican, an effective draw in the national popular vote could get him over the line in enough battleground states to win back the White House.
Consistent with this shift, three negative perceptions of Trump have declined slightly since the debate — dishonest (41%, down from 45%); chaotic (43%, down from 47%) and weird (34%, down from 38%) — while two positive perceptions have increased: focused (35%, up from 31% to 35%) and unifying (17%, up from 14%).
Over the same period, the share of respondents who say Harris is tough has fallen from 28% to 24%, while the percentages who say she is weak (35%, up from 31%) and chaotic (25%, up from 20%) have inched up.
Trump is also narrowly seen as the favorite. In early October, Harris led 39% to 35% on the question of who has the “best chance” of winning the 2024 presidential election. Now Trump edges Harris by a near-identical margin (38% to 35%).
No clear lead on ‘closing arguments’
Still, when compared to Harris, far more Americans see Trump as dangerous (42%, vs. 29%), corrupt (41% vs. 27%) and extreme on the issues (41% vs. 27%).
To evaluate how each candidate’s message is connecting with voters, Yahoo News and YouGov asked respondents to read competing arguments paraphrased from the final days of the campaign and choose which they find “most convincing.”
A couple break Trump’s way.
More voters are convinced, for example, by the argument that “transgender rights have gone too far, infringing on the rights of women and children, especially in sports and schools” (57%) than by the argument that “protecting transgender rights is essential to ensuring equality for all Americans, including access to health care and protection from discrimination” (37%). Trump has consistently attacked Harris for her support of transgender rights in ads and at rallies.
The same goes for the argument that America should impose an “across-the-board 10% tariff on all foreign imports and a 60% tariff for products from China” to “protect our workers” and raise revenue (46%). The counterargument — that such tariffs are “a big new sales tax on Americans that will greatly increase inflation” and “raise prices for middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year” — scores lower (39%).
Other “closing argument” comparisons favor Harris, however.
Her clearest win is on immigration — an issue where Trump typically dominates. Only 38% of voters are convinced that “the illegal immigrant invasion has turned the U.S. into an occupied country” and that “all illegal immigrants — an estimated 12 million people — should be identified and deported by the national guard and local police, even if getting them out would end up being violent.” (Trump has said that implementing his mass deportation plan could be “a bloody story.”)
In contrast, far more voters (52%) are convinced that “the government should strengthen border security and create an earned pathway to citizenship for immigrants who have obeyed the law since arriving here” instead of implementing “massive raids and giant detention camps” that “would likely sweep up people who have lived in the U.S. for decades.”
Harris’s argument on abortion (“Roe v. Wade protected the rights of women for 52 years. Now women are dying in states where they can’t get the care they need — and things will get even worse if Trump wins and tries to ban abortion nationwide”) is also more convincing than Trump’s (“Roe v. Wade tore the country apart for 52 years. Everyone wanted it gone. Now things will be better because each state can decide whether or not to allow abortions”), by a 48% to 40% margin.
Finally, voters tend to agree with Harris’s argument that “we should believe” ex-Trump staffers who have “refused to endorse him” and who now “warn that he is dangerous and unfit for the presidency” (49%) rather than dismissing them as “bitter” ex-employees who “may not be telling the truth about [Trump’s] character” (41%).
Yet other comparisons explicitly about Trump and Harris split more evenly down partisan lines.
Forty-seven percent of voters, for instance, are convinced that if Trump wins reelection he will no longer have “experienced advisors” to protect him from “carrying out his most extreme ideas” and “hurting the country.” The same number (47%) are convinced that Trump likes to make “provocative statements” — but that “after four years as president, we know that [he] won’t actually go through with anything that would hurt the country.”
Meanwhile, voters are similarly divided over the argument that “nothing will change” if Harris succeeds Biden (49%) and the counterargument that “her own presidency will be about finding new ways to move America forward and solve big problems” (47%).
Overall, neither candidate seems to have a decisive messaging advantage. So it’s no surprise the race is a stalemate.
A dramatic finish
Heading into Election Day, the stakes couldn’t be higher. A remarkable number of voters on both sides describe the contest in existential terms, with clear pluralities of Harris voters (45%) and Trump voters (48%) agreeing that the "country will never recover" if their preferred candidate loses.
Only 35% and 36%, respectively, say that “the country will suffer for four years and then have a chance to change direction” if their side loses. Almost no one says “it doesn’t really matter who is president.”
Nearly half (44%) of all registered voters say they have already voted (as of Oct. 31). Harris leads 54% to 43% among this group; Trump leads by a similar margin (53% to 44%) among those who have not yet voted but say they “definitely” will (another 46% of registered voters). Trump also leads (42% to 32%) among the 10% of voters who say they are less likely to vote, or may not vote at all.
When asked to choose between Trump and Harris, just 3% of registered voters say they are completely undecided.
The majority of registered voters say they plan to vote early, either in person (30%) or by mail (27%), while 39% say they will vote in person on Election Day. Harris has a massive advantage over Trump (65% to 31%) among those planning to vote by mail, while Trump leads among those planning to vote on Election Day (56% to 39%) and among those planning to vote early at an in-person site (52% to 42%).
Will both sides accept this year’s outcome, whatever it might be? Don’t count on it.
In 2020, a majority of Biden supporters were worried that Republicans would try to “steal the election”; right before Election Day, only 31% of Democratic voters told Yahoo News and YouGov that the contest would be “free and fair.”
But now, four years after they saw Trump try — and fail — to overturn his 2020 loss, Democrats are far more confident in the process, with a full 77% predicting the 2024 election will be free and fair.
In contrast, Trump’s incessant falsehoods about fraud have left Republicans less confident in the electoral process. In late October 2020, 25% of Republican voters said the coming election would be free and fair; today, that number is identical. And fewer Republicans now say their state will accurately count all the votes (54%) than said the same in 2020 (57%).
In light of those doubts, just 23% of voters now expect Trump to concede if he loses — down from 30% four years ago.
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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,710 U.S. adults interviewed online from Oct. 29 to 31, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to Nov. 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.8%.