The polls have shifted in Kamala Harris’ favor
Kamala Harris
The poll, released Wednesday, found Harris had an overall 2-point lead over Trump in a horse race including third-party candidates across the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
And in a head-to-head matchup across those states, Harris had an overall 1-point lead over her Republican opponent.
While that lead is slim, it shows how much ground Harris has gained since Biden was in her place. In May, the same survey found that Trump had an overall swing-state lead of 5 points over Biden in a horse-race matchup and an overall lead of 3 points in a head-to-head matchup.
In each battleground state, the Cook survey found Harris had between a 2- and 5-point lead over Trump in a horse-race matchup, with Georgia being the only state where the two were tied. In May, Trump was leading across the board, except in Wisconsin, where he was tied with Biden.
Polling across the board has shown movement toward Harris in the very tight 2024 race.
The latest New York Times/Siena College polls found Harris was leading the former president by a 4-point margin in the critical swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. When Biden was in her place, an earlier version of the poll found he had only a small lead in Wisconsin and trailed Trump in both Michigan and Pennsylvania.
And even in Florida — which was once considered a swing state but has become more solidly red in recent years — Harris has narrowed Trump’s lead. In a Florida Atlantic University poll released Wednesday, Trump had a 3-point edge over Harris among likely Florida voters, half the lead he had over Biden when the poll was conducted in June.
It’s not just swing-state polls where Harris is gaining ground.
Vice President Kamala Harris is riding a wave of enthusiasm to surge ahead in polling against former President Donald Trump.
In an average of 14 national polls, Harris has edged ahead of Trump by 3 points as of Thursday evening, an analysis by FiveThirtyEight found.
That’s a big jump from the days after Biden exited the race, when FiveThirtyEight found Harris had only a 0.8-point average national lead over Trump.
In one national poll, conducted by NPR/PBS News/Marist and released last week, Harris crept up to a 3-point advantage over Trump in both a horse race and a head-to-head matchup. That’s 4 points up from where Harris was in the same poll shortly after she replaced Biden in the race; Trump at that time had a 1-point advantage.
And it’s Black voters, white women with college degrees, and independent women voters who are propelling Harris ahead, the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found. Her favor with these groups has increased 20 to 30 points since she took over the Democratic ticket, NPR reported.
Across the board, Harris is doing better than Biden was before he dropped out of the race. In an average of national state-level polling, Harris was doing 7.2 points better when matched up against Trump compared with Biden, an analysis by the statistician Nate Silver found.
All the excitement around Harris’ fresh campaign has infuriated Trump and led Republicans to argue that it’s just a honeymoon phase.
Meanwhile, Harris will hope that her surge in polling isn’t temporary — and that she can ride the wave of momentum through a shortened campaign season and into the White House.
