Kamala Harris is still trailing behind Donald Trump in his home state of Florida, according to a new poll conducted before her campaign turns its focus to the state.
The Harris campaign will launch a bus tour focusing on “reproductive freedom” this week, stopping first near Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home is located. It comes after a ban on abortion after six weeks went into effect in Florida in May.
Currently Trump wins 48 percent of respondents’ votes in the state compared to 43 percent for Harris, a new poll from Redfield & Wilton Strategies in partnership with The Telegraph found.
The five-point lead tallies with the state polling average according to FiveThirtyEight, which puts Trump 4.7 points ahead of Harris.
The survey was conducted between August 25 and 28, and spoke to 7,939 across 10 swing states. The results are not all bad news for Harris however, as it showed she was ahead of Trump in five out of the 10 potential swing states, while Nevada was tied.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Savannah, Georgia on August 29. A swing state poll shows Donald Trump remains in a 5 per cent margin lead over the vice president in Florida ahead of her campaign’s bus tour through the state this week.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Florida has been a key battleground state for decades. It has the third highest number of electoral college votes, and a history of frequently backing the winning candidate, but by a relatively small margin — no presidential candidate has won it by more than 5 percent in this century, The Atlantic reported.
While Trump typically polls well in Florida, a USA Today/Suffolk University/WSVN-TV survey conducted between August 7 and August 11 showed that Trump’s usual lead in the state had narrowed to just 5 points, smaller than any poll since July 10, Newsweek reported.
A poll conducted by the firm Inquire between August 22-25 found that Harris and Trump were tied to win in Florida’s biggest county Miami-Dade with 47 percent of support each.
Ahead of the Harris campaign’s bus tour this week, Harris-Walz campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times, “Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket’s vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to drag us back. As we crisscross the country, we’ll be driving that contrast home to red and blue voters and independents.”
The campaign has also just completed a two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia, seemingly in an attempt to target the battleground state’s rural counties, Newsweek previously reported.
The Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found that Trump has secured a two-point lead in Georgia, after the pair were previously tied in the state while results remain unchanged in Arizona, with Trump still ahead by 1 percent.
Along with his hold over his home state, Georgia, and Arizona, Trump is also ahead in North Carolina although his lead has narrowed to 1 percent.
The platform’s research also showed that 46.9 per cent of the U.S. population would vote for a Democratic Party, while 44.6 per cent would vote Republican, in a survey last updated on August 25.
Newsweek has reached out to the campaigns of Trump and Harris.
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