In a head-to-head matchup, Trump bests Harris, 50% to 47%.

WHO HAS AND HASN’T ENDORSED HARRIS AND TRUMP THIS ELECTION CYCLE

When third-party candidates are included, Trump’s lead over Harris narrows to 2 points, 48% to 46%. The Green Party’s Jill Stein, independent candidate Cornel West, and the Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver all are at 1% each. Another 4% are undecided.

Trump holds a 9-point lead over Harris, 52% to 43%, in both voters aged 50-64 and voters aged 65 and up, while Harris performs best with voters aged 18-34, where she holds a 13-point lead over Trump, 52% to 39%. Among voters aged 35-49, Harris leads Trump by just a point, 47% to 46%.

There remains a significant gender gap, with Trump leading Harris among male voters by 11 points, 53% to 42%, while Harris wins female voters by 7 points, 50% to 43%.

But among men and women aged 50 and above, Trump wins both groups over Harris. Women voters aged 50 and above prefer Trump more than Harris by 5 points, 50% to 45%, while male voters that age or older prefer Trump more than Harris by 15 points, 55% to 40%.

The largest discrepancies between the two candidates are reflected along racial lines.

Trump leads Harris by 25 points among white voters, 60% to 35%, while Harris leads Trump among black voters by 74 points, 84% to 10%. The gap grows even higher among voters aged 50 and above as white voters prefer Trump by 36 points, 66% to 30%, and black voters prefer Harris by 88 points, 92% to 4%.

“North Carolina voters over age 50 could tip the scale for any candidate in November,” Michael Olender, AARP’s North Carolina state director, said in a statement. “Candidates who want to win should pay attention to the issues that matter to older voters — from protecting Social Security and Medicare to supporting family caregivers.”

The elder vote could decide which candidate will win the state’s 16 electoral votes given the reliability of their turnout. In the 2020 elections, older voters made up 54% of the state’s voters. Two years later, during the 2022 midterm elections, they accounted for 64% of the state’s voters.

The presidential race in North Carolina escalated with last week’s bombshell revelations from CNN that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, wrote derogatory and sexually explicit comments on a pornographic website before entering politics.

The AARP poll was conducted two days before the news broke from Sept. 11 to Sept. 17, making it one of the last surveys before the scandal. More polling will need to be collected to understand the electoral fallout, but Harris’s campaign has already pounced on linking Trump to Robinson, and several of Robinson’s campaign staffers have resigned from the campaign.

Robinson claimed he would pursue legal action against the network in his first campaign appearance after the news broke.

But even before the embarrassing revelations, Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, was leading Robinson by 10 points, 52% to 42%, according to the AARP poll.

Trump is also polling at a net 12 points ahead of Robinson overall.

The AARP commissioned the bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research to conduct the survey of 1,324 likely voters.

The survey’s margin of error at the 95% confidence level for the 600 statewide sample is plus or minus 4 percentage points, for the 800 total sample of voters 50+ is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, and for the 400 total sample of black voters 50+ is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.