AP Photo/Paul Sancya
State-specific polls had good news for Vice President Kamala Harris, and polling guru Nate Silver now has Harris overtaking former President Donald Trump.
Silver, who uses the same forecasting model that he used at FiveThirtyEight, shared new numbers on Friday that gave Harris the edge over Trump “for the first time since Aug. 28.” He noted that the race was still a toss-up (and further noted in a separate post: “If you care about the outcome, then vote, donate, volunteer, or try to persuade your friends”) with 50/50 odds, but some individual states definitely gave Harris some advantages.
Most of the numbers provided were within the margin of error, but Harris posted narrow leads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada. She had more substantial leads in Minnesota and New Mexico. In North Carolina, Trump’s advantage is a mere 0.1 percentage point (which, to be sure, can still decide an election); his lead over Harris in Arizona and Georgia are also less than one percentage point (0.8 percent and 0.9
This polling occurred before the bombshell news out of North Carolina that the current Republican candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, posted racist and inflammatory comments on a porn site years ago. CNN data analyst Harry Enten predicted that this could have serious effects on the North Carolina numbers in the future and even cost Trump the whole election.
Nationally, Harris led Trump 48.9 percent to 46.1 percent.