Women Power Harris to Strong Week in Pennsylvania Polling
A slew of solid polls were driven by strong gains among women who are giving Harris positive marks on the economy and abortion.
This week we finally got the flood of high quality polling in Pennsylvania we had all been waiting for. Polls from six top polling outfits, all ranked in the top twenty of FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Rankings, showed Harris with leads ranging from 1 to 5 points. Prior to this week’s polling dump the narrative had been that Harris was struggling in Pennsylvania. This week's data by no means predicts a win for her but it does show that despite a tight race Harris has a very credible path to victory in Pennsylvania.
One should never draw sweeping conclusions about any election based on one or two polls. And examining trends is always preferable. But Harris has only been in the race for exactly two months today which means we don’t have a lot of month-over-month data to look at. But, the NYT/Siena poll has now surveyed Pennsylvania twice since Harris entered the race which gives us a chance to examine a couple of important trends that are contributing to her 4-point lead in their research.
While Harris has lost some ground among men, she made huge gains month-over-month with women according to the NYT/Siena poll released this week that showed her with a overall 4-point lead in the state. Her lead among women jumped to +17 in September from +7 in August. For a quick comparison, Biden won women in Pennsylvania in 2020 by 11 points (according to CNN exit polls) on his way to winning the state. It’s also worth noting that even though Harris lost a little ground with men between the two polls, she’s still leading women by more than she’s losing men. That’s important because in both 2016 and 2020 women made up about 53% of the final electorate.
What’s driving this surge in support among women in Pennsylvania? While this month’s NYT/Siena poll did not ask voters about their top issues, the August poll did. In that survey, the economy and abortion tied for the top spot among women voters.
Over the last month Harris saw big gains on both of these top issues. In the August survey Harris held a 1-point lead among women voters on who would do a better job on the economy. In the poll released this week she held an 8-point lead among women on the economy, a nifty 7-point gain on this top issue, which helped drive a 2-point gain on the economy across both men and women. On abortion, Harris continued to gain, as well. She increased her lead among women voters on who would better handle the issue of abortion by 8-points (she leads Trump by 33-points on abortion).
And it’s not just the NYT/Siena poll. A Quinipiac poll released Wednesday showed a 9-point gain among women for Harris (+13 in August to +22 in September). That’s consistent with the 7-point gain in the NYT/Siena poll. While we don’t have a month-over-month comparison, it’s also worth noting that a Suffolk poll found Harris with a 17-point lead among women, which matches what the NYT/Siena poll found.
While Harris still has a lot of work to do, the strong movement of women voters in her direction is a positive sign. We’ll need more data to see if this trend is holding and whether other swing states are seeing similar trends but it could be an early indication that her messaging is penetrating with it’s intended audiences. Over the past two months the Harris campaign has bombarded Pennsylvania with tens of millions of dollars in ads that have been largely focused on the broader economy (inflation, small businesses, housing and taxes) and abortion.
Outside of women, Harris is holding her own at the moment with rural voters and men, both groups she won’t win but will need to keep her margin of loss down as much as she can. Her numbers with rural voters in this week's poll are about 6-points ahead of where Biden ended up in 2020 and she’s running about 2-points ahead of Biden among men. Trump and his allied groups are running a barrage of ads on immigration, crime, fracking and Bidenomics that could eat into those numbers over the next 40-plus days but she’s holding her own at the moment– she even gained two points among rural voters between the August and September surveys.
Like I said, it’s early and the lack of consistent data has made tracking trends difficult. But the first pieces we saw this week were encouraging for Harris. She’s managing her margins so far with rural voters, white voters and men while expanding her lead among women who should make up a larger portion of the electorate. We’ll see if these trends continue but, for now, Pennsylvania is certainly in play.