Topline
The race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remains a seeming dead heat just over two weeks before the election, according to a string of surveys that largely show Harris with a narrow national advantage—though the key swing states are virtually tied.
Key Facts
Harris leads by four points, 50% to 46%, in Morning Consult’s weekly poll released Tuesday, consistent with last week’s results, but down from her 51%-45% lead in the two polls prior to last week.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll, also released Tuesday, found Harris with a three-point lead, 46% to 43% (but two points when using rounded figures, within the poll’s two-point margin of error); last week’s Reuters/Ipsos poll also found her with a three-point lead, 45% to 42%.
Harris is up one point, 45% to 44%, in a USA Today/Suffolk University poll of likely voters taken Oct. 14-18 (margin of error 3.1), as Trump has narrowed the margins since the groups’ last poll taken in August that found Harris ahead by five points.
Harris also led Trump by just one point—49%-48%—in Emerson College’s poll of likely voters published Friday, after Harris posted two-point leads in September and early October and a four-point lead in August.
Trump regained a lead over Harris in a Fox News poll released Wednesday that found him up 50%-48% among likely voters—a change from Harris’ 50%-48% edge in September, after Trump led her 50%-49% in August.
Harris leads in two other surveys published Wednesday: She has a five-point advantage (52%-47%) in a Marist College poll of likely voters, up from Harris’ two-point edge in the closely watched pollster’s September survey, and a four-point (49%-45%) lead in an Economist/YouGov likely voter poll, equal to Harris’ lead last week.
Several other surveys show tighter margins: Trump trails Harris 51% to 49% in an Oct. 11-13 Harvard CAPS/Harris survey of registered voters, after the two were tied in the groups’ September survey.
Trump and Harris were tied at 48% in a new NBC poll of registered voters released Oct. 13, while an ABC/Ipsos poll released the same day shows Harris with a two-point (50%-48%) advantage among likely voters, within the ABC poll’s 2.5-point margin of error—a shift after both ABC and NBC showed Harris with a roughly five-point lead last month.
A third poll out Oct. 13 from CBS/YouGov showed Harris leading Trump 51%-48% with likely voters—slightly tighter than Harris’ 52%-48% lead last month—while Harris has a narrower 50%-49% edge in the seven battleground states.
Harris is up 49% to 46% in a New York Times/Siena poll out Oct. 8, the first time she’s led Trump in the groups’ polling since July.
Three other polls over the past month—a Quinnipiac survey released Sept. 24 and a CNN/SSRS poll released Sept. 24—showed Trump and Harris tied.
Harris has erased Trump’s lead over President Joe Biden since announcing her candidacy on July 21, though her edge has decreased slightly over the past two months, peaking at 3.7 points in late August, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling average.
Who Is Favored To Win The Election, Harris Or Trump?
Trump is favored to win 53 times out of 100, compared to 47 for Harris, according to FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast. Political analyst and statistician Nate Silver also gives Trump a narrow edge, but wrote recently he’s “never seen an election in which the forecast spent more time in the vicinity of 50/50.”
Big Number
0.8. That’s how many points Harris leads Trump by in RealClearPolitics’ latest polling average. Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight’s average shows Harris with a 1.8-point lead, and Nate Silver has Harris up 1.6 points in his Silver Bulletin forecast.
How Does Harris Perform Against Trump In Swing States?
Harris leads narrowly in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, while Trump has an advantage in Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages. That means Trump would win the election if the state-level polling proves to be exactly right—but all seven swing states are within single digits, and most have margins of less than a percentage point.
Surprising Fact
A poll from NBC News released Sept. 29 found that while Harris still leads Trump among Latinos, the lead is shrinking. The NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll—which was conducted Sept. 16-23 among 1,000 registered Latino voters—showed 54% supported Harris compared with 40% who supported Trump and 6% who said they were unsure who they would vote for. The support for Harris is higher than it was when Biden was running against Trump, NBC said, but is still significantly lower than past leads Democratic candidates have had, including a 36-point lead in 2020 polling and 50-point lead in 2016 polling. The poll had a margin of error of +/-3.1 percentage points.
How Did The Debate Impact Polls?
Pre-debate surveys found Harris’ polling surge appeared to plateau, including a NPR/PBS/Marist survey of registered voters taken Sept. 3-5 that showed Harris leading Trump 49% to 48%, down from a three-point lead in August. Most post-debate surveys show the majority of respondents believe Harris won the debate, but not enough to significantly impact the horserace between the two. A New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters released Sept. 19 found the majority of voters in every demographic gave positive reviews of Harris’ Sept. 10 debate performance, with 67% overall saying she did well, compared to 40% who said the same about Trump. Harris was up 52%-46% among likely voters and 51%-47% among registered voters in an ABC News/Ipsos poll taken days following the debate on Sept. 11-13, essentially unchanged from her six-point leads with likely voters in late August and early August ABC/Ipsos surveys—even though 63% of Americans said Harris won the debate.
Key Background
Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 after resisting calls from within his own party for weeks to end his reelection bid in the wake of his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate. He immediately endorsed Harris and she announced plans to seek the nomination. The party quickly coalesced around her, with 99% of Democratic delegates voting to officially nominate her in a virtual roll call prior to the Democratic National Convention in August. Harris tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, weeks after Trump announced Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his pick for vice president. ABC News hosted the first debate between Harris and Trump on Sept. 10 from Philadelphia. Harris’ rise in polls is coupled with an increase in Democratic enthusiasm for the election, which has nearly doubled since Harris’ entrance into the race, from 46% in June to 85% now, while enthusiasm among Republicans has stayed stagnant at 71%, according to a Monmouth University poll released Aug. 14.
Further Reading
New HarrisX/Forbes Poll: Harris Won Debate—But It Largely Hasn’t Changed Voters’ Minds (Forbes)
Trump’s Lead Over Biden And Harris Jumped After RNC, HarrisX/Forbes Poll Finds (Forbes)
Here’s How Kamala Harris Performs In Polls Against Trump—As Biden Drops Out And Endorses Harris (Forbes)
Harris’ Lead Over Trump Unchanged After DNC, First Poll Finds (Forbes)