Early voting begins Sept. 20. Want to know who’s on your ballot? See our Voter Guide.A few weeks ago, a poll by Roanoke College had Democrats reaching for the smelling salts because it showed Kamala Harris with a lead of 3 percentage points over Donald Trump in Virginia, when they felt she should be posting a bigger lead.Two subsequent polls by lesser-known pollsters that showed the same result did little to relieve their anxiety (or their willingness to disparage those particular pollsters).This week, three new polls have come out and these have very different results from those earlier polls. Instead of Harris ahead slightly, but still within the margin of error, we now see her more clearly pulling out in front in the state. Morning Consult showed Harris leading in Virginia 52% to 42%. A Washington Post/Schar School poll had Harris leading 50% to 42%. Then, on a Wednesday, a poll from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School dropped, and it showed Harris leading 46% to 36%.I’m not inclined to fawn over every poll, but when we have three in a row that a) show a change from the three before them and b) all say essentially the same thing, well, that does seem to deserve some attention — and some scrutiny.Some housekeeping first: The Post/Schar poll is ranked the 23rd best in the country by the Five Thirty Eight data website, VCU 70th, Morning Consult 116th. In all, the site ranks 277 pollsters, and then there are many more that are unranked. One thing that factors into those ratings is how open the pollsters are about their results. The Post and VCU make their cross-tabs — aka, the details — public. Morning Consult’s are not, so you won’t see me talk much about that poll. More housekeeping: VCU was in the field Aug. 26-Sept. 6, Morning Consult Aug. 30-Sept. 8, and the Post/Schar poll Sept. 4-8. That means the Post/Schar poll is both ranked the best of the bunch and is also the most recent of the bunch. All these were conducted before Tuesday’s debate, but when campaigns are underway, a more recent poll is almost always better than one that’s not so fresh. Finally, not every poll asks the same questions or asks similar questions the same way, so it’s not possible to compare every result across multiple polls. Those technicalities out of the way, let’s dive in.Virginia is trending toward HarrisIn July, the VCU poll showed Trump leading President Joe Biden in Virginia 39% to 36%. Some other polls about that same time also showed Trump ahead in Virginia by 1 to 5 percentage points. Now we have three polls showing Harris leading by 8 to 10 percentage points. Harris appears to have rallied Democrats who were previously feeling so-so about Biden. These polls don’t mean that the previous Roanoke College poll was wrong, just that things have changed. Campaigns are about persuading people, and more people appear to now be persuaded in Harris’ direction.It’s also worth noting that these current margins are more in line with the results of the 2020 presidential election in Virginia, where Biden won the state by 10 percentage points — 54.1% to 44.0%. There’s some external evidence to support these polls; Axios reported this week that the Trump campaign is shifting resources out of Virginia into other states. Those moves may be a more significant indication of the state of play than any polling. The economy remains the top issueThis is something most of the polls asked about, and the results are generally the same. The Post/Schar poll ranked the economy first, with abortion and immigration tied for second. The VCU poll ranked the economy first, with abortion second and immigration a more distant third. Good news and bad news for Harris on the economySo if the economy is voters’ main concern, who is best able to address it? The VCU poll showed a split: 38% said Harris, 37% said Trump. The Post/Schar poll said 47% Harris, 43% Trump.Democrats would like more separation, of course. However, given the inflation of the past few years, and the centrality of that issue to the Republican campaign, it does not appear that Republicans are being successful so far in blaming Harris for problems with the economy. If these feelings hold, this suggests that Harris may have neutralized Trump, at least for the time being, on this issue. On the other hand, Republicans can certainly argue that, if voters were happy about the economy, they’d give more credit to a sitting vice president. This is one of those figures that both sides can find simultaneously to be good news and bad news.However, this figure is a clearer warning sign for Democrats: The VCU poll finds that independents overwhelmingly think Trump would do a better job with the economy, with 36% of independents saying they trust Trump on that issue, while only 15% say they trust Harris. Virginia has voted Democratic for four presidential elections in a row; Harris may simply have a built-in advantage in the state. However, if those figures for independents are repeated for other states, that will help Trump and hurt Harris in places where things are closer. Speaking of independents … Polls differ when it comes to independents The Roanoke College poll found that independents broke sharply for Trump: 50% to 34% in a head-to-head matchup, 47% to 35% in a multicandidate race. It was those independents, and the overwhelming support for Trump among rural voters, that was keeping Trump in the game in that poll.These new polls show vastly different results. Morning Consult shows independents breaking for Harris 48% to 40%; the Post/Schar poll says Harris leads among independents 47% to 42%, while the VCU poll shows independents at Trump 26.3% and Harris 18.8%, with 22.2% undecided and 7.1% for independent Cornel West. This essentially gives us three conflicting scenarios: Trump leading among independents (Roanoke College), Harris leading among independents (Morning Consult/Post), or independents split every which way with nearly a quarter still undecided (VCU).I have no explanation for such differences, but these differences are important. We often hear that there are no more swing voters, that every election is now a base election. These polls dispute that notion. The Roanoke College poll found that 27% of respondents described themselves as independents. The Washington Post found their share at 30%. The VCU poll reported a whopping 43% described themselves as independents, more than either party. “More and more people are identifying as independents,” said Robyn McDougle, VCU’s associate dean of research and outreach. “Independents are having a very strong voice and they’re starting to impact elections in Virginia.” The younger a voter is, the more likely he or she is to be an independent. That brings us to this … Democrats have a young voter problemIn 2020, Biden won voters 18-29 with 59% of the vote to 35% for Trump, according to the Pew Research Center. This time around, Harris is much weaker with young voters. The Post/Schar poll found that Harris leads in that age cohort by 48% to 45%. The VCU poll categorized voters by a different cohort, age 18 to 24. Among those voters, Harris led 39.3% to 34.5%. For a party that likes to think young voters are naturally in their corner, these are dispiriting numbers, although Republicans are quick to say this simply reflects the economic realities of a generation that has just entered the workplace over the past four years. Again, a Democratic tilt might help Harris win Virginia, but if these numbers are similar elsewhere, she has problems. This is why the Harris campaign is investing big in trying to reach young adults through TikTok.The gender gap might help Democrats The key word there is “might.” The VCU poll found the gender gap pretty even — Harris leading among women by 9.3 percentage points, Trump leading among men by 8.7 percentage points. The Post/Schar poll found the gender gap working in Democrats’ favor, with Harris leading among women by 18 percentage points while Trump leads among men by just 5 percentage points. The Morning Consult poll found Harris leading both genders by 10 percentage points, which I simply can’t believe in the light of other polling. A gender gap is usually a political fact of life; the question is how big it is. This year, we’re still not sure.Republicans are missing out on some potential votersThe conventional wisdom has always been that Democrats benefit from a large turnout, Republicans a smaller one. I’m struck by one number in the VCU poll that suggests this simply isn’t true. The poll found that among Virginians who aren’t registered, Trump is the favorite at 40.7%, compared to 18.1% for Harris. Before Democrats scoff at this point, let me just point out this: The lowest registration and turnout figures are often in rural Virginia, which now votes overwhelmingly Republican. As I pointed out in a recent column, the Democratic vote in large parts of rural Virginia hasn’t really declined much. What’s happened is that under Trump, Republicans have mobilized thousands of new voters in rural localities, producing record turnouts for those counties — yet those record turnouts often remain below turnout figures for Democratic-voting metro areas. That means it’s entirely possible there are lots more untapped Republican voters out there in rural Virginia. The poll offers another correlation: Voter registration declines with education, but support for Trump increases. There appear to be a lot of people with a high school education or less who aren’t registered, but who would vote for Trump if they were.Democrats are much more visible than Republicans about pushing registration drives and making it easier to vote. These numbers suggest that Republicans might want to embrace some Democratic innovations they consider philosophically anathema. For instance, if Republicans embraced early voting and ballot dropboxes, they might yield a lot more voters, particularly in rural areas where early voting is often lowest. It’s no accident that Gov. Glenn Youngkin was pushing early voting in campaign stops for the Republican ticket this week in Pittsylvania, Campbell, Bedford and Amherst counties. At the risk of sounding like a Republican strategist (which I’m assuredly not), that’s not enough, though. I’ll have more to say on this in an upcoming column (with numbers!), but for now, this VCU poll result makes the point: Republicans ought to be running voter registration drives across rural Virginia. If they did, the overall results in these three polls might be quite different. More polling data aheadGimli in the mines of Moria in “Lord of the Rings.” Courtesy of IMDB.I intend to mine this polling data like the dwarves mined Moria in “Lord of the Rings.” Yes, I know that author J.R.R. Tolkien wrote that “the dwarves delved too greedily and too deep” and awoke things that shouldn’t have been woken. I promise to be careful. I can also tell you that there are some other details that may delight partisans on both sides. I’ll get into that data in West of the Capital, my weekly political newsletter. It goes out Friday afternoons. You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters here: The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday The Weekly A roundup of our 10 most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays The Weekend A roundup of local events, delivered Thursdays Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. 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