Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are entering the one-month mark before Election Day in a virtual tie nationally and in key battleground states, leaving both in a fight to break through with voters to clench the White House.
An aggregation of polls for Decision Desk HQ/The Hill shows Harris with a lead of 4 percentage points over Trump, at 50%-45.8% overall, The Hill reported Tuesday.
According to RealClearPolitics averages meanwhile, Harris is squeaking by 49.1%-47.1% for Trump nationally. The site's averages show an even tighter race in the battleground states, with Trump leading by just a fraction of a point by 48.3%-48.2%.
The Decision Desk HQ results show Trump with a 0.8-point lead in Arizona, a 0.5-point lead in North Carolina, and a 0.2-point lead in Georgia. Harris, meanwhile, has a 0.6-point lead in Michigan, a 2.2-point lead in Nevada, a 0.6-point lead in Pennsylvania, and a 1.7-point lead in Wisconsin.
The candidates' campaign efforts will likely be in the key last month of the election in the battleground states of North Carolina and Georgia, where areas were devastated by Hurricane Helene, and in Florida, where the massive storm came ashore.
Trump will visit four battleground states this week. He traveled to Georgia on Monday and will speak at two rallies in Wisconsin on Tuesday before returning to North Carolina for a town hall.
He will return Saturday to Butler, Pennsylvania, for a rally in the place where he was shot in the ear in an attempted assassination.
Harris, meanwhile, will start a bus tour of Pennsylvania on Wednesday with running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
She had been traveling through the Sun Belt over the weekend, but returned to Washington, D.C., to attend briefings about the hurricane and recovery efforts.
The candidates are also engaged in further fundraising efforts. Harris raised $55 million in two California fundraisers over the weekend, adding to the $404 million cash in hand her campaign had at the end of August. Trump, meanwhile, had $295 million in his war chest at that time.
The rhetoric in the campaign could also shift this month, with Republican strategists trying to convince Trump to campaign on policy, not personality issues.
"What you've got to do is you got to get out of the personality issues and focus on the issues that are the things that are going to drive people to make a rational decision for what's [in the] best interest for the country," GOP lobbyist Marc Lampkin, a former deputy campaign manager for President George W. Bush, said.
The Trump campaign is also counting on the media appearances he and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, are making. Harris and Walz have only done a handful of interviews.
"Nobody in the game of politics works harder than President Trump, especially in the fourth quarter," Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. "President Trump and Sen. Vance will continue to outpace Harris and Walz in the media, and bring their winning message to make America wealthy, safe, and strong again to voters across the country."
The Harris campaign, meanwhile, is saying Trump is making personal attacks because he is afraid to debate her again.
"I think Donald Trump is saying some of this stuff because he's scared, because he's worried about her beating him," Harris spokesperson Ian Sams told MSNBC Monday. "That's why he refuses to accept a second debate.
"He's clearly lashing out and emotional and moody because he doesn't really want to face her on the debate stage again."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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