Harris momentum builds in polls

A presidential race that at one point seemed like it was becoming former President Trump’s to lose increasingly looks like a toss-up as Vice President Harris gains momentum and a new running mate.

The extent to which Harris’s pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) helps her is up in the air, but there’s no question the vice president has been riding an upward swing in the polls since President Biden ended his reelection bid late last month and endorsed her.

Harris and Trump are nearly tied in the national polling average tracked by The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, with Trump winning 47.1 percent support, and Harris at 47 percent. Trump initially was up by more than 6 points when Harris declared her candidacy following Biden’s decision to leave the race.

The Hill/Decision Desk HQ model polling average isn’t the only place giving Harris and Democrats new hope, either.

Harris also led Trump in pollster Nate Silver’s electoral forecast for the first time in recent days, after Trump had the advantage against first Biden and then Harris for weeks. The vice president’s chance of winning the election also surpassed Trump’s. 

Silver last week declared the race a “toss-up,” the same place it is considered now. He saw Trump as a favorite against Biden because of the incumbent’s poorer performance in battleground states even before the debate. 

DDHQ has tracked a shift in the Democrats’ favor in nine of 10 key states, in addition to the national polling. The largest shift in the polling average from before Biden dropped out has been in North Carolina, where Trump’s lead has dropped from 10 points to just 3 points. 

Democrats have long sought a presidential victory in the Tar Heel State, which they’ve failed to take in a presidential contest since then-Sen. Barack Obama’s narrow victory in 2008. Ending that streak this year seemed unlikely as Biden faltered, but North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) expressed optimism Sunday that Harris is capable of flipping the state. 

Margins have also narrowed in other states that are more crucial to Democrats winning the White House, though Trump still leads in most of the states likely to determine the outcome.

Only two polls have been conducted and released in Nevada since Biden dropped out, but together they show Trump with an average lead of 3 points, down from the 9-point lead he previously had. 

Eight polls for Pennsylvania and five polls each from Georgia and Michigan have revealed shifts toward Harris of 2 points, 4 points and 3 points, respectively. 

Harris has seen improvements in polling in swing states and nationally.

She led Trump by 1 percentage point nationally and was tied at 50 percent in the battleground states in a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday. That poll and others have shown an increase in enthusiasm among Democratic voters, with 85 percent now saying they plan to vote this fall, compared to 81 percent last month.

A Morning Consult poll released Monday showed Harris leading Trump by 4 points, which is the largest lead for the Democratic presidential candidate in almost a year. Harris also led Trump by 5 points among independents and 9 points among voters 18 to 35 years old, a group Biden was seemingly underperforming with in polls. 

Harris has performed better than Biden in polls that include independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump led Biden on average by varying but small margins in three-way contests that included Kennedy, but Harris has held a narrow 1.5-point lead in that scenario in the average from DDHQ and The Hill. FiveThirtyEight’s polling average shows her with a similar lead. 

All the polls point to a tight race, suggesting both candidates will have to work hard to turn out their supporters.

After Harris became a candidate, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio argued in a memo that Harris will experience a honeymoon period of positive headlines that will raise her numbers and possibly even put her ahead of Trump, but that the change would be temporary. 

The question now is if and when that honeymoon will end, and what the numbers will look like as the candidates sprint toward the fall.