It has now been over three weeks since Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris as his presumptive replacement as Democratic nominee. Unsurprisingly, Harris got a quick bounce in the polls as the new, younger, and fresher rival to Donald Trump. But now it’s becoming clear this is a trend, not just a momentary bounce.
According to the FiveThirtyEight national polling averages, Harris is leading Trump by 2.7 percent (46.0 to 43.3 percent), with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 4.9 percent. When Biden dropped out, he was trailing in the same averages by 3.2 percent. In a contest as static as the 2024 presidential race had been, this six-point swing is pretty big, though it should be noted that Harris’s lead is not much more than the popular vote margin Hillary Clinton achieved in her losing effort against Trump in 2016. To look at it another way, the 46 percent polling average Harris is posting is six points higher than any achieved by Biden dating back to March.
The trend lines in national polls also reflect a pro-Democratic shift. YouGov-Economist tested Harris against Trump back on July 16, showing Trump leading by 5 percent (44 to 39 percent). Then, on July 23, after Biden’s withdrawal, the same pollster had Trump leading Harris by 3 percent (44 to 41 percent). On July 30 and again on August 6 YouGov-Economist showed Harris leading Trump by 2 percent (46 to 44 percent on the earlier date and 45 to 43 percent later). Similarly, RMG Research had Trump leading Harris by two points (48 to 46 percent) on July 23, with Harris leading Trump by five points (47 to 42 percent) on July 31. Morning Consult’s tracking poll showed Trump leading Harris by two points ( 47 - 45 percent) on July 22 but then Harris leading Trump by four points (48 - 44 percent) on August 4. A CBS poll of likely voters conducted by YouGov shows a three-point Trump lead (51 to 48 percent) on July 18 turning into a one-point Harris lead (50 to 49 percent) on August 2.
Polls comparing the Harris-Trump matchup to the earlier Biden-Trump matchup mostly show the same pro-Democratic trend. On July 16, Reuters-Ipsos showed Trump ahead of Biden by two points (43 percent to 41 percent). On July 23, the same poll gave Harris a two-point lead (44 percent to 42 percent). On July 2, the New York Times–Siena showed Trump leading Biden by six points (49 percent to 43 percent). On July 24, that pollster showed Trump leading Harris by one point (48 percent to 47 percent). Similarly, on July 2, The Wall Street Journal had Trump leading Biden by six points (48 to 42 percent) and Harris by just two points (49 to 47 percent) on July 25. Both Times-Siena and WSJ showed Harris ahead by a point when non-major-party candidates were included. Most recently, Survey USA showed Harris leading Trump by three points (48 - 45 percent) among likely voters as of August 5; the same pollster showed Trump leading Biden by two points (45 - 43 percent) back on June 28; and Marquette Law School gave Harris a four-point lead (52 to 48 percent) among likely voters as of August 1; Marquette showed Trump and Biden tied in mid-May.
Battleground-state data has been slower to arrive, but what we have shows Harris improving on Biden’s performance quite consistently. A battery of Emerson–The Hill polls taken from July 22 to July 23 of five battleground states showed Wisconsin tied at 47 percent and Trump leading Harris by five points (49 percent to 44 percent) in Arizona; two points (48 percent to 46 percent) in Georgia; one point (46 percent to 45 percent) in Michigan; and two points (48 percent to 46 percent) in Pennsylvania. What’s more significant are the trend lines since the last polls from Emerson in mid-July, testing Biden against Trump:
More recently, Bloomberg–Morning Consult has released a new batch of seven battleground-state polls taken from July 24–28. Overall, they showed Harris leading Trump by one percent (48 to 47 percent), as compared to a two-point Trump lead over Biden in early July. The individual state gains by Harris were also striking: She led by 2 percent (49 to 47 percent) in Arizona, a real problem state for Biden; by 2 percent (47 to 45 percent) in Nevada; by 2 percent (49 to 47 percent) in Wisconsin; and by an astonishing 11 percent (53 to 42 percent) in Michigan. Harris was tied with Trump in Georgia at 47 percent, and she trailed him by 2 percent (46 to 48 percent) in North Carolina and by 4 percent (46 to 50 percent) in Pennsylvania.
During the week of July 31 to August 7, Ipsos resurveyed participants in a June poll across the same seven battleground states and found Harris leading Trump by two points (50 to 48 percent); the earlier poll showed Trump leading Biden by three points (50 to 47 percent).
A July 29-August 2 survey from Split Ticket-Data for Progress of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showed Harris leading Trump by a point (48 to 47 percent) among likely voters across the three states, after trailing him by five points (45 to 50 percent) in a July 18-23 poll. And most recently on August 10 New York Times-Siena released a battery of Trump vs. Harris polls from the same three “blue wall” states, showing Harris leading by four points among likely voters in each of them by identical 50 to 46 percent margins. A Times-Siena LV poll of Pennsylvania a month earlier had shown Trump leading Harris by one point (48 to 47 percent).
Four battleground states have enough post-Biden-Harris-switch polling now for FiveThirtyEight to compile averages, and all of them show very close races with Harris gaining recent ground. In Arizona, Harris leads Trump by 0.4 percent (45.1 to 44.8 percent). In Georgia, the two candidates are tied at 45.6 percent. Harris leads in Michigan by 3.3 percent (46.1 to 42.8 percent) and in Pennsylvania by 1.6 percent (45.6 to 44.1 percent).
There is also significant evidence that Harris is doing better than Biden among the young, Black, and Latino voting categories on which Biden’s 2020 win depended. In the most recent national Times-Siena poll, she leads Trump among under-30 likely voters by 59 percent to 38 percent, among Black likely voters by 72 percent to 19 percent, and among Latino likely voters by 60 percent to 36 percent. A new Axios–Generation Lab poll of 18- to 34-year-old voters showed Harris expanding a six-point Biden lead (53 percent to 47 percent) to 20 points (60 percent to 40 percent). And the Morning Consult tracking poll gave Harris a nine-point lead among voters under 35. The very latest likely voter survey from CBS-YouGov shows Harris at over 60 percent among under-30 voters, and over 80 percent among Black voters. And a new large-sample survey of Latino voters in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina from BSP Research shows Harris leading Trump by a robust 55 - 37 percent margin.
More generally, Harris is becoming more popular than Biden. FiveThirtyEight’s favorability averages for Harris currently show her at 43.2 percent favorable to 48.6 percent unfavorable, up from a 36/54 ratio a month ago, and distinctly better than Biden’s 38/54 margin when he dropped out of the race. Trump’s favorability ratio at FiveThirtyEight is at 43.4 favorable to 51.6 unfavorable.
The odds are good that with Harris still benefiting from the successful reveal of her VP pick, Tim Walz, with a united Democratic convention on tap beginning on August 19, she can keep this positive trend in her standing up and running for most of this month. That’s if she makes no big mistakes, and if the Trump-Vance ticket continues to show signs of disorientation at the new contest it faces.
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