October 11 :
According to a study of Reuters/Ipsos polling, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has completely wiped out Republican opponent Donald Trump among middle-class Americans and suburbanites. The contest is still very tight, but since President Joe Biden's reelection bid began to wane on July 21, Vice President Harris has taken the lead in both of these major demographic groupings, boosting Democrats' chances in the Nov. 5 election.
Importantly, suburbanites are just as racially diverse as the rest of the country's electorate—roughly half of all Americans. In 2020, when the candidates were running for president, Biden had a six-point lead over Trump in suburban counties. Trump had a 43 percent to 40 percent edge among suburbanites in Reuters/Ipsos polls taken in June and July, just before Biden left, indicating that the Democrat was having trouble energizing his fans.
Harris started to close the deficit when she launched her campaign in July, and in polls conducted in September and October, she led Trump by 47% to 41% among suburban voters. The analysis of six Reuters/Ipsos surveys, which included responses from over 6,000 registered voters, shows that the Democratic Party has a nine-point lead.
During the same time periods, Trump lost nine percentage points to Biden and also fell behind Harris among voters whose household income was between $50,000 and $100,000 (about the middle third of the country). A margin of error of about 3% was included in the figures.
According to an analysis of exit surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, Trump secured 52% of the vote in this category in 2020.
Voters rank the economy as their top concern in the run-up to the election, according to Reuters/Ipsos surveys. In an October poll, 46% of voters favored Trump over Harris on this topic, an 8-point margin.
On issues like crime and immigration, Trump has also been demonstrated by the polls to be the more trustworthy candidate. In August, Trump assured his supporters that he would protect the suburbs and stop illegal immigrants from entering the country "away from the suburbs."
Trump claims that middle-class Americans have been hit hard by inflation, which he attributes to the Biden administration. The promise to expand the middle class has been central to Harris's campaign speeches. When asked who would be better to defend democracy and speak out against political extremism, she is more frequently chosen by voters. The economic and inflationary advantages held by Trump have been significantly diminished because to her emphasis on affordability, according to David Wasserman, a political analyst at the Cook Political Report.
According to Wasserman, Harris seems to be doing well with middle-class voters, who may be motivated by her campaign's repeated promises to assist middle-class households, and by the relatively well-off suburbanites, who may be becoming more positive about the economy.
He did, however, point out that the margin of victory might hinge on voter turnout in both Democratic-leaning cities and Republican-leaning small towns. In follow-up interviews conducted this week, Harris's supporters were asked about their level of attention to her before she became a presidential contender. They also mentioned that their support for her grew as they learned more about her.
In the most recent of the six surveys, which were carried out between October 4th and 7th, Harris was favored by registered voters overall by a slim margin of 3 percentage points over Trump, with 46% to 43%. The outcome in seven states that are considered to be in a tight race—Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Georgia—will likely decide the election winner, despite her little lead in national polls.
A victory in the middle ground, whether on a national or state level, will not guarantee victory. Trump won six states that had voted Democratic in 2012, causing Democrat Hillary Clinton to lose the election despite receiving roughly 3 million more votes than Trump worldwide and beating him in suburban counties by approximately 1 percentage point.
An 83-year-old Harris fan named Sheila Lester from Peoria, Arizona, who resides largely in the state's battleground Maricopa County, expressed her growing conviction that Trump would defeat Biden in a phone interview. Since Harris had the potential to become the first female president of the United States, she was elated when the Democratic Party swiftly rallied behind her campaign.
"The response that she has gotten has made me a little bit more proud of this country," Lester, a middle-class retiree and former customer service representative, said. She praised Harris for her commitment to expanding the middle class and her firm stance on abortion rights. "I am definitely anti-Trump, but I believe I'm more pro-Harris."
After voting for Trump in 2016, Maricopa County played a pivotal part in Biden's 2020 triumph, barely shifting to the Democratic Party. A resident of the middle-class Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield, Michigan, Karen Davidson, 83, stated that she was not really familiar with Harris prior to her rise to the position of ticket leader.
"I needed to know more about her to form any kind of thought," stated Davidson. "The way she stood up to people who were berating her, I had to respect that having been in the industrial machinery business when women didn't work in it, I know what that's like," continued Davidson. "She had the strength, and that's what's needed to run our country."
Kevin Garcia, an employee at a grocery shop in Pooler, Georgia, a suburb of Savannah, expressed relief that Biden had withdrawn his support for small businesses in favor of Harris's programs, rather than Trump's plan to impose taxes on imported goods. Lives in a single-family home neighborhood in the state that, like Arizona, narrowly swung Democratic in 2020. "I just feel better about the chances," said Garcia, a 24-year-old.
