Can Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump? Latest poll updates

Alicja Hagopian
Fri, August 30, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris is making a bid for the White House with running mate Tim Walz after replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket just a few months before Election Day.

Harris officially accepted the Democratic nomination last week. Meanwhile, independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr suspended his presidential campaign on August 23, endorsing Donald Trump for president.

While Kennedy’s endorsement could give some added momentum to Trump’s dwindling national numbers, it’s still unclear what independent voters will actually do.

Meanwhile, Harris and Tim Walz embarked on a new phase of their campaign, giving their first unscripted interview to CNN on Thursday night. During that interview, Harris declared that her “values” were unchanged, despite some reversals on key policy positions surrounding immigration. She also pledged to appoint a Republican to her cabinet if elected president and brushed off Trump’s remarks about her recently “turning Black.”

So how will Harris actually fare against Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, this November?

Harris has a 3.4-point lead over Trump in the latest average of national polls, collated by FiveThirtyEight. On average, Harris has been marginally ahead of Trump in national polls, though the race remains tight with variation in swing states.

A new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University also shows Harris beating Trump by seven points when race and gender are considered by participants.

“When voters are made to think about the race or gender of the candidates, Harris’ lead grows substantially; when they’re not, support is essentially tied,” the university said in a statement.

Harris has also surged ahead of Trump following last week’s Democratic National Convention, a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released on August 29 shows.

Harris is leading Trump 48 percent to 43 percent, which is an eight-point turnaround from June when the former president was ahead of Biden by four points.

It also remains to be seen how Kennedy’s exit will affect Trump-Harris poll numbers, but this analysis from The Independent shows how RFK Jr. has higher support in states like New Mexico, and could free up some of the younger vote.
Independents

A Morning Consult megapoll of 11,501 registered voters shows that independent voters are also leaning more towards Harris, though there has been significant variation between different surveys of the elusive voter group.

Capturing the independent vote will be crucial for either Harris or Trump to take the lead in this election. This was the most likely group to vote for Kennedy, with 1 in 10 independents saying they will vote for a third-party candidate.

Meanwhile, exclusive polling from Savanta showed that voters still trust the Republican Party more to handle major policy issues like the economy, inflation, jobs, and crime.
Demographics

A CBS/YouGov poll (up to August 16) has Harris at a 3-point lead and shows a substantial gender divide is emerging between the two candidates, with more men supporting Trump and more women voting for Harris.

Trump’s key supporters remain male voters, the 45-64 age group, and white voters with no college education. But in the last group, Trump appears to have lost some of his leverage over Harris when compared to Biden.

Harris polls best with young voters, female voters, and Black voters, among whom Harris has a +65 point lead.

While Harris and Biden both typically led among white college-educated voters, the recent CBS poll suggests that Harris has only a +5 point lead over Trump in this group — a far cry from the 20+ point lead she showed in other polls a few weeks ago.
Fighting in the battlegrounds

In the seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the war is still being waged between Democrat and Republican campaigns.

Research from the Cook Political Report show that Harris has a lead in six out of seven states, with Trump holding strong in Nevada.

The poll shows Harris’s strongest lead in Arizona, where Biden won by just 0.4 percent in 2020.

This is a substantial swing from the same polls in May, with a Trump-Biden matchup, where Trump led in six states and tied in Wisconsin.

Yet polling in swing states continues to show variation from pollster to pollster, with a YouGov/CBS poll conducted up to the same date (August 2) suggesting that neither candidate had a significant lead in any of the battlegrounds.

Overall, battleground polls have consistently shown that Harris has picked up momentum from her predecessor’s trailing support, and is on-track to lead Trump in some states
What do voters think?

A poll from Emerson College (August 12-14) shows that Kamala Harris is the only candidate of whom voters have an overall favorable opinion, at +2 percent.

This is significantly more positive than both Trump and his running mate Vance, who have a net -10 unfavorable rating, according to the poll of 1,000 US likely voters.

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Meanwhile, VP pick Walz has an overall neutral favorability rating, with 39 percent of voters holding a favorable view and 39 percent holding an unfavorable view.

Interestingly, one in five voters (22 percent) said they had never heard of Walz, one week after he was selected. For JD Vance the number was lower, at 12 percent.

When asked how much they approve of how incumbent Joe Biden is doing as president, voters showed net disapproval of -14 percent.