Could the third time be the charm for the former and perhaps future president?
Nevada’s six electoral votes will loom large if the Electoral College is as tight as many projections hold, and new polling suggests Donald Trump may have them in hand for the first time ever.
And key to his 49% to 47% lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in a head-to-head ballot test, per the AARP survey, is the former president’s strong hold over independent voters.
Trump commands 46% support among unaligned voters, compared with just 39% for Harris, with 9% backing other or no candidates and 6% undecided.
It’s not just indy voters moving into the Trump column.
It’s also swing voters over 50 — those independent-minded voters free from party loyalty who decide on candidate quality. He’s up 41% to 27% for Harris, with 18% backing other or no candidates and 15% undecided.
Older voters split among gender and ethnic lines in this race, but overall Trump leads 51% to 44% with them.
Men over 50 are strongly in favor of Trump, 56% to 39%. But women in the same age group slightly prefer the veep, 49% to 47%.
The ex-prez is up 55% to 41% with whites over 50, while Harris leads Trump 55% to 40% with their Hispanic counterparts.
There are some positives for Harris in this data.
She’s doing better than President Biden was. He trailed Trump by 7 points just before exiting the race shortly after canceling a Las Vegas speech to a Hispanic outreach group at the last minute over health concerns.
A major reason for that was Biden being down 16 points with independents (40% to 24%) and mustering just 77% support from Democrats, 10 points fewer than Harris has now.
AARP pollsters also examined the Senate race, and it’s yet another sour poll for Republican candidate Sam Brown, who is down to Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen, 49% to 44%.
Brown is up 3 with voters 50 and older, but Rosen is up 16 points with voters under the age of 50,
Rosen is 3 points ahead with independents, and the data suggest a significant subset of Republicans may not support the GOP candidate; Brown is at 82% among his own party, 6 points fewer than the incumbent’s intraparty support.