Disaster Strikes Trump Campaign as Harris Pulls Ahead in Must-Win North Carolina

She not only leads in the polls but also has a small early voting advantage, positioning the state to turn blue.

When it rains, it really pours. And the floodgates have opened at the wrong time for the Trump campaign.

To add insult to injury for the Trump campaign, still reeling from the Selzer poll in Iowa showing Harris ahead by 3 points, a New York Times/Siena poll released just hours ago shows Harris leading in North Carolina by two to four points.

Check the timing of the poll: it started just one day after the MAGA hate rally at Madison Square Garden in NYC, right as hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians were turning out for early voting.

Early voting has now ended, with a record-breaking 4.44 million ballots already cast—representing 56% turnout, and Election Day voting still to come.

If people were indicating support for Kamala Harris during this surge in early voting, it should be reflected in the numbers. So, I pulled county-level early voting data from the North Carolina election database, applied Biden and Trump’s 2020 vote shares, and—voila!—Democrats appear to have about 19,000 more votes than the GOP.

Of course, this comparison isn’t perfect, since Harris is currently polling well ahead of Biden’s 2020 numbers with key high-propensity voter groups, including women and college-educated voters. So, she’s likely outperforming his vote share in many counties. In other words, Harris is probably leading by more than the +19k margin indicated by the data.