Voters across the Sun Belt say Donald Trump improved their lives when he was president — and worry that a Kamala Harris White House would not — setting the stage for an extraordinarily competitive contest in three key states, according to the latest polls from The New York Times and Siena College.

The polls found that Trump has gained a lead in Arizona and remains ahead in Georgia, two states that he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. But in North Carolina, which has not voted for a Democrat since 2008, Harris trails Trump by just a narrow margin.

Related Story: Democrats Poised to Flip Key California House Seats, New Poll Suggests

The polls of these three states, taken from Tuesday to Saturday, presented further evidence that in a sharply divided nation, the presidential contest is shaping up to be one of the tightest in history.

Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina are on the roster of seven battleground states where the focus of both the Trump and Harris campaigns has been since Labor Day. Harris has shown relative strength in several key states across the Midwest and, most critically to her hopes of becoming president, Pennsylvania.

Related Story: Democrats Poised to Flip Key California House Seats, New Poll Suggests

But Arizona, which Biden won by just over 10,400 votes in 2020, now presents a challenge for the Harris campaign. Trump is ahead, 50% to 45%, the poll found. A Times/Siena poll there in August found Harris leading by 5 percentage points. Latino voters, in particular, appear to have moved away from Harris, though a significant number — 10% — said they were now undecided. And Trump is benefiting from ticket splitting there: While Harris is trailing, the poll shows that the Democratic candidate for Senate is ahead.

In North Carolina, which Trump won by under 75,000 votes in 2020, the former president has a slim lead over Harris, drawing 49% of the vote compared with 47% for Harris. (The poll was mostly conducted before reports that Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor there, had made disturbing posts in a pornography forum, which some Republicans fear could hurt Trump in the state.) And in Georgia, a state that Biden won by just under 11,800 votes in 2020, Trump continues to have a slight lead over Harris, 49% to 45%. The margin of error in each state is between 4 and 5 percentage points.

–

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Adam Nagourney, Ruth Igielnik and Camille Baker/Adriana Zehbrauskas
c. 2024 The New York Times Company