And the latest Monmouth University poll on the U.S. presidential race shows vice President Kamala Harris holds just a slight edge over former President Donald Trump.

With just under half of registered voters, 49% saying they'll either definitely or probably vote for Harris in November, while 44% will definitely or probably support Trump.

Now, those numbers are virtually unchanged, up just one point from Monmouth's last poll in August after Harris was named to the top of the ticket.

But it does show wide gender gaps when it comes to the candidates and specific issues.

More women trust Harris on policies dealing with abortion while Trump leaves Harris significantly in the number of men who trust him.

More on immigration.

For more on the survey and what it means now that we're just 50 days out from the election, I'm joined by Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Patrick, good to see you.

I found this poll interesting for a couple of reasons.

The leading one, the fact that enthusiasm among Democrats had also just spiked after Harris entered the race.

And yet, this poll finds the voter support needle isn't really moving after the performance in her debate.

Yeah, I mean, there's two ways to look at it is that she didn't get a huge jump from the debate.

And, you know, we all saw that performance.

And the verdict was pretty clear on her winning that.

But by the same token, she got a huge jump in enthusiasm when she announced.

And she's holding onto that enthusiasm.

And I think it's a sign of just simply how divided our electorate is.

We're just, you know, in our trenches politically and there's not a lot of movement to be had.

And that's always been the story, since Donald Trump came on the scene.

And I think there was some expectation because of the shift in enthusiasm when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate, that there would also be another jump, after what was seen as a big event with that debate.

And there wasn't, because we're kind of back to normal, where big events and those kinds of things only move the needle very little, and in such a way that it's it's too, sensitive for polling to pick up on and exactly how that is.

Yeah.

And not enough to be outside the margin of error.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

And that's that's really the key is I think she probably picked up about a point overall.

The real question that we have is about kind of who's going to show up to vote.

Did she get more voters who were already sitting, you know, kind of thinking I wouldn't I wouldn't vote for Donald Trump if I came out.

But really, what's the point?

What's government going to do for me?

Is she kind of lighting a fire under them to get them to say, you know what?

Maybe it is important for me to vote.

That's the thing that we're trying to keep, keep track of there, because I think that is the important metric for the Harris campaign right now.

So it's not necessarily about unaffiliated voters, independent voters.

This is more about whether or not people are going to make up their mind to even cast a ballot this election cycle.

Right, right.

The you know, the media loves asking the question about how do you convince undecided voters.

But quite frankly, the campaigns aren't asking that question because they understand that that at this point, if you don't, if you can't pick between those two at all, then you just won't vote because there's nothing that they can do to convince you.

Right.

What we're seeing is, for example, if we look at the extremely motivated voters right now, you know, Donald Trump is behind by like three points.

But if we expand that to the extremely and very motivated carries, can expand the lead that she has right now.

And now I think that's what she's focused on.

She's got more of a room to grow than Donald Trump does.

So, I mean, turnout in the blue, all states in our neighbor say Pennsylvania, a key swing state that's really going to matter more than ever.

I mean, that, and as your poll seems to indicate, could determine the outcome of this election.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm confident with even taking into account the kind of polling error that we have had every time that Trump's been on the ballot, that Kamala Harris, at this point in time, is ahead in the national vote by how many points?

I don't know, it could be one could be are the five points.

But that means in in a state like Pennsylvania, the race is closer.

And when the race is that close, it could come down to, you know, 10,000 Democrats forgetting to put the date on their absentee ballot and not getting their vote counted.

That could determine the outcome of this race or a whole host of other factors.

That's it's that it's that narrow.

Monmouth University's Patrick Murray, Pat, thanks so much.

My pleasure.