(The Center Square) – Less than 48 hours before arrival in North Carolina and just over two weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump has become the first to clear the margin of error leading a presidential poll in the battleground state.
Trump leads Kamala Harris 51%-46% in the latest poll from Rasmussen Reports and American Thinker. The margin of error is +/- 3% with a 95% level of confidence in the sampling of 1,042 likely voters taken Oct. 9 through Monday.
Trump is slated for a visit to the East Carolina University campus in Greenville on Monday afternoon, where he’ll speak from Minges Coliseum. Pitt County was a 53.96%-44.51% win for the challenger Biden against the incumbent Republican in 2020, taking more than 47,000 of 87,573 votes.
Pitt was one of 10 counties, and the southern-most sans one, east of Interstate 95 he captured. The Maine to Florida connector is recognized as a bit of a divider for the state, with more populous areas toward the western two-thirds and plenty of rural socioeconomic challenges from it to the Atlantic Ocean.
Other key answers from the poll: Federal funding is favored 80%-12% for Americans impacted by disaster over “assistance for illegal aliens;” 70% prefer “major change” to “business as usual” in relation to the next president’s governing; and Harris, daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, is collecting 70% of Black voters as compared to 92% by Biden in 2020.
The top issues question in choosing a president or U.S. senator was led by the economy (33%), border security (17%) and abortion (12%). At 7% each were violent crime, climate change and government corruption. Education (5%) matched other (5%) and was just in front of not sure (4%) and global conflicts and war (3%). North Carolina does not have a Senate seat race this year.
On the question of “who is the biggest enemy America faces?” the Democratic Party got 27%, China 19%, the Republican Party 16%, Russia 15%, domestic extremists 9%, unsure 8%, and Iran 6%.
In 2020, Trump won North Carolina 49.9%-48.6% over the ticket of Biden and Harris. In 2016, Trump won the state 49.8%-46.2% over the ticket of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. Trump outperformed the September and October polls each time.
North Carolina is one of seven consensus battleground states that collectively pivot 93 electoral college votes. Few prognosticators believe either candidate can win without the state or Pennsylvania, and perhaps need to take both.
Pennsylvania has 19 electoral college votes, North Carolina and Georgia 16 each, Michigan 15, Arizona 11, Wisconsin 10 and Nevada six.
The 78-year-old Trump has a 20-point platform, led by a return to enforcement of securing national borders. He chastises the Democrats for inflation that at 2.4% remains higher than when he left office in January 2021, yet is considerably lower than the 9.1% high of June 2022 in the era of Bidenomics. Energy independence and “manufacturing superpower” are also in his top five.
Harris, second in command to Biden and turning 60 on Sunday, says her top issues are an opportunity economy and lower costs for families. Tax cuts for the middle class, affordable rent and home ownership, and growth by small businesses also top her list. On abortion she favors federal regulation over state authority, meaning a return to Roe v. Wade.
Republicans own an unmistakable 14-cycle pattern in presidential elections. Since Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson carried North Carolina and won the presidency in 1964, only Democrats Jimmy Carter (1976) and Barack Obama (2008) have prevailed. Respectively four years later for each, they lost to Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney.
