Harris-Trump showdown: Top political handicapper shifts ratings in key states
A top non-partisan political handicapper is shifting three key states toward Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2024 election showdown with former President Donald Trump.
The Cook Political Report is moving North Carolina from leans Republican to toss up. The Tar Heel State is one of seven battlegrounds across the country that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential election.
Former President Barack Obama was the last Democrat to carry the state in the race for the White House, in the 2008 election.
Four years ago, Trump narrowly edged President Biden in the state. However, following Biden's disastrous debate performance against Trump in late June, the former president saw his lead in North Carolina grow to the mid single digits.
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After Biden ended his 2024 re-election bid on July 21, and Harris replaced her boss at the top of the Democrats' national ticket, the race in North Carolina tightened to a margin-of-error contest.
"Trump hasn’t lost political ground since July; instead it’s that Harris has improved on Biden’s vote share by seven points," Cook Political Report publisher and editor-in-chief Amy Walter wrote in explaining her ratings shift.
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"In other words, the race is tightening, not because Harris is cutting into Trump’s vote, but because Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are coming home," Walter added.
Trump, determined not to let North Carolina slip from his column, has campaigned in the state three times since Biden dropped out of the race five and a half weeks ago.
Additionally, the Trump campaign outspent the Harris campaign by $8.3 million to run ads in North Carolina since the president dropped out of the 2024 race, according to the national ad tracking firm AdImpact. However, the Harris campaign currently has $30 million in ad reservations in the state, compared to just $7.3 million for the Trump campaign.
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The Cook Political Report now joins another leading non-partisan political handicapper, Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, in classifying North Carolina as a toss up.
Walter also made a shift in two competitive presidential election states that the Democrats have reliably won for decades, moving Minnesota and New Hampshire from lean Democrat to likely Democrat.
In the weeks after the Biden-Trump debate, polls indicated Trump making gains in Minnesota - where the GOP has not carried the state in a presidential election in over a half century, and New Hampshire, which the Democrats have carried in five straight White House contests.
However, Walter said that "Harris has been able to reconstitute and energize the Democratic coalition…taking states like Minnesota and New Hampshire out of reach for the Trump campaign."