The first poll of North Carolinians taken after former President Donald Trump’s discussion with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night gave him a slight edge, but it wasn’t enough to beat the margin of error.
A poll of 815 potential voters by Quantus Polls and News on Friday showed that Trump had a 50% to 48.3% lead, with a +/-3.4% margin of error. 37% of those polled were Republicans, 33% were Democrats, and 29% were independent.
This was done on Wednesday and Thursday.
Some more statistics show that men (56%) and women (54%) preferred Trump and Harris, respectively. White voters (61%) and Black voters (85%) also preferred Trump and Harris, respectively. Voters without a college degree (54%) preferred Trump and educated voters (56% preferred Harris).
Earlier this week, two polls of at least 900 potential voters in North Carolina, taken before Tuesday’s debate and made public this week, came close to giving Harris the edge and breaking the statistical tie.
The Democrat, 59 years old, beat the Republican, 78 years old, by 3 percentage points in both polls. This was just below the +/- 3.2% margin of error in the Quinnipiac poll and a little above the shaky +/- 4.9% margin of error in the WRAL-TV-sponsored SurveyUSA poll.
RealClear Polling says that Trump is ahead by a tenth of a percentage point in the race as a whole, with no margin of error taken into account. Election Day is still 53 days away on November 8.
North Carolina is one of the seven states with 93 electoral college votes that are in a tight race. Pennsylvania has 19, North Carolina and Georgia each have 16, Michigan has 15, Arizona has 11, Wisconsin has 10, and Nevada has 6.
Since the Democratic National Convention from August 19–22, polls of North Carolinians have been close, but all but one have shown Trump with a 1-point lead. The only poll that didn’t show this was from August 23–26 and was from Bloomberg. There was a +/-4% mistake range in the votes from those 700 registered voters, who gave Harris a 49%-47% win.