A new series of polls reveals a tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, and federal lawmakers are working to avoid a looming government shutdown.
New round of national and battleground polling shows close race
The nation woke up to a fresh set of national and battleground state polls on Thursday that show a tight race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Nationwide Surveys
Nationally, a new survey from the New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College found the two rivals deadlocked with 47% apiece among likely voters.
The poll, conducted Sept. 11-16 — after last week's debate — found more respondents thought Harris performed well in the showdown, but it does not appear to have given her an edge overall.
The survey has a margin of error of +/- 3%.
The nationwide survey was a slight improvement for Harris from the group's previous poll taken before the debate, which showed her trailing Trump by a point.
A Fox News poll released found Harris with a two-point advantage over Trump. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 3%.
Battleground state polls
Meanwhile, new polls also dug into where the race stands in the key northern "blue wall" states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
The NYT-Inquirer-Siena survey shows Harris with a four-point lead over Trump at 50% to 46% in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state in the nation. The Pennsylvania survey has a margin of error of +/-3.8%.
They also surveyed the city of Philadelphia, a key Democratic stronghold in the state. Harris led Trump 79-16 in Philly, similar to President Joe Biden's 81-17 margin in the city in 2020.
A new batch of Marist polls, however — this one conducted Sept. 12-17 with a margin of error of +/- 3.2% — found the two candidates tied at 49% in Pennsylvania.
A fresh survey from the Washington Post recorded Harris leading Trump in the state by one point (48-47) among both likely and registered voters, well within the +/- 3.6% point margin of error.
The Marist polls also found Harris holding a 5% lead over Trump with likely voters in the battleground state of Michigan (52-47), while leading by just one point in Wisconsin (50-49).
Marist's Michigan poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.4% and the Wisconsin poll's margin of error is +/- 3.6%.
Separate polls from Emerson College/The Hill have Harris leading in Michigan by two points (49-47) and trailing in Wisconsin by one point (49-48), both well within the margin of errors. Trump held a one-point lead in Pennsylvania (48-47) in the poll.
Trump also led in Arizona (49-48) and Georgia (50-47) while Harris led in North Carolina (49-48), all well within the poll's margin of error.
The survey showed the two were tied in Nevada.
—Spectrum News’ Maddie Gannon
Schumer says ‘the Senate will step in’ to avert shutdown after Johnson’s plan fails
After the House of Representatives on Wednesday night scuttled House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to temporarily fund the government, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Congress’ upper chamber will “step in” to try and avert a shutdown.
More than a dozen Republicans joined nearly every Democrat in the House to reject Johnson’s plan, which paired a GOP-backed bill aimed at curbing noncitizen voting — something state data shows is an extremely rare practice — with a six-month extension of government funding.
Johnson pulled a vote on the measure last week in the face of mounting opposition from both Democrats and members of his own party, but put it up for a vote amid pressure from former President Donald Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee, who urged Republicans to shut down the government if the noncitizen voting act, known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, isn’t passed.
"If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form," Trump wrote on social media hours before the vote Thursday. Trump's statement came amid his unfounded allegations of Democrats registering tens of thousands of noncitizens to vote.
But with a Sept. 30 deadline rapidly approaching, lawmakers are back to square one, with no alternative plan from Johnson in sight.
That, Schumer said Thursday, is where the Senate comes in.
“To the surprise of virtually no one, Speaker Johnson's deeply flawed and highly partisan CR failed,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday, highlighting the 202-220 vote (with two Republicans voting “present”) across the ideological spectrum as evidence of “broad opposition to the Speaker's partisan maneuver.”
"It's time the Speaker moves on. Sadly, time is not a luxury that Congress has right now,” he added, noting that the Sept. 30 funding deadline is 11 days away. “And instead of doing the bipartisan work everyone knows is required for avoiding a shutdown, the House Republican leadership has wasted two weeks — two weeks — listening to Donald Trump’s ridiculous claims on the campaign trail.”
“Now that their efforts have failed, House Republicans don’t seem to have any plan for actually keeping the government open, so the Senate will step in,” Schumer said, adding that later in the day he will put the process in motion to allow Congress to avert a shutdown “in the event that Speaker Johnson does not work with us in a bipartisan, bicameral manner."
“Both sides are gonna spend the next few days trying to figure out the best path remaining to keep the government open,” the New York Democrat detailed. “By filing today, I’m giving the Senate maximum flexibility for preventing a shutdown … Senators are ready to work this process the right way, Democrats talking to Republicans, both sides at the negotiating table finding a way to keep the government open without partisan hoopla.”
The SAVE Act, which already passed the House earlier this year largely along party lines, would require proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections.
But currently, only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections, and state data shows that noncitizen voting is very rare.
Opponents say that the bill disenfranchises those who do not have documentation, such as a passport or birth certificate, readily available when registering to vote. Democrats referred to the bill as a “poison pill” in funding negotiations and urged Republicans to negotiate in a bipartisan manner.
Lawmakers in the Senate of both parties have suggested a shorter extension of funding, which would carry the government past November’s election and allow lawmakers to return to Washington in December to hammer out a long-term spending bill.