WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — The results of a poll released Thursday find Democrats lead their Republican counterparts in the race for the White House in Virginia and for one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats.
The Emerson College Polling/The Hill/DC News Now survey shows 52% of Virginia voters support Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race, compared to 44% for former President Donald Trump. Three percent of those polled said they were undecided.
A poll in July 2024, conducted before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, found 45% of Virginia voters favored Trump, 43% supported Biden, and 11% remained undecided.
“Trump’s support has not significantly shifted since Harris became the nominee in Virginia;
instead, undecided voters have moved off the sidelines to back Kamala Harris,” said Spencer
Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling. “There have been some demographic shifts underneath the toplines — in July, independents broke 46% to 38% for Trump, now they break 52% to 38% for Harris. One of the most significant shifts occurred among women voters — they broke by six points for Biden over Trump in July (47% to 41%), and now break by 20 points for Harris, 58% to 38%.”
The Emerson College Polling/The Hill/DC News Now poll found that Harris’ fellow Democrat U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine leads Republican Hung Cao by 10 points, 51% to 41%, with 6% undecided.
Kaine, the incumbent, has held a 10-point lead since the survey in July showed Kaine at 49%, compared to Cao’s 39%.
The September 2024 poll found the top issue for Virginia voters is the economy. The issues following that are: housing affordability (14%), threats to democracy (12%), immigration (8%), abortion (6%), health care (6%), and education (6%).
“Voters who find the economy to be the top issue break for Trump, 68% to 30%, while voters who say housing affordability is the top issue facing Virginia break for Harris, 76% to 15%,” Kimball noted.
Forty percent of Virginia voters said they would like to see the state’s abortion laws to be less strict, while 39% think they should remain as they are. Twenty-two percent think they should be made more strict.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin holds a 44% job approval rating, while 34% disapprove of the job he is doing.
Biden holds a 40% job approval rating among Virginia voters, while 51% disapprove of his performance.
Methodology
The Emerson College Polling/The Hill/DC News Now Virginia survey was conducted September 22-24, 2024. The sample of likely voters, n=860, has a credibility interval, similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE), of +/- 3.3 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, age, party affiliation, and region based on 2024 likely voter modeling. Turnout modeling is based on information provided by voter registration/statewide demographic databases.
It is important to remember that subsets based on demographics, such as gender, age, education, and race/ethnicity, carry with them higher credibility intervals, as the sample size is reduced. Survey results should be understood within the poll’s range of scores, and with a confidence interval of 95% a poll will fall outside the range of scores 1 in 20 times.
Data was collected by contacting cell phones via MMS-to-web text, (list provided by Aristotle), and an online panel of voters provided by CINT. The survey was offered in English.
All questions asked in this survey with the exact wording, along with full results, demographics, and cross tabulations can be found under Full Results. This survey was funded by Nexstar Media.
