Harris up heading into Labor Day, but race is a jump ball

Vice President Harris is entering Labor Day weekend with a national polling lead over former President Trump in the race for the White House, but the race still seems up for grabs.

Harris leads Trump by about 4 points in the national average from The Hill/Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). She is at least neck and neck with Trump, if not ahead, in the seven battlegrounds likely to decide the race.

She’s had a lead in the average for three “blue wall” states for a couple of weeks, currently up by about 1 point in Pennsylvania, 2 points in Michigan and 4 points in Wisconsin. She’s also taken her first leads in the average for Nevada and Georgia in recent days, although both are by less than 1 point.

The numbers illustrate a competitive race as the election cycle is about reach a sprint with Labor Day coming Monday. This weekend is the symbolic end of summer and start of fall, with just nine weeks until Election Day. 

And it comes after Harris took part in her first sit-down interview, along with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, since becoming the Democratic nominee. During the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday, Harris made no major missteps as she defended some of her shifts on policy from her 2020 presidential run. 

Momentum has seemed to be on Harris’s side, but analysts view the race as a toss-up in which neither candidate has a clear advantage. 

Pollster Nate Silver revealed Thursday that Trump has a slightly higher chance of winning the Electoral College in his model following the Democratic convention last week, with 52.4 percent to Harris’s 47.3 percent. One of the main reasons for this, Silver says, is because the model presumes Harris is receiving a bounce after the convention, as candidates often do. 

“The good news for Harris is that if she merely holds her current numbers for a couple more weeks, she’ll begin to track up again in our forecast as the model will become more confident that she’s out of the convention bounce period,” Silver wrote. 

He said another concern for Harris may be Pennsylvania, where the past few polls have shown her tied or just slightly behind Trump, which could mean she’ll be a bit further behind as any convention bump fades. 

Most national polls have shown Harris ahead by at least a couple of points but often within the margin of error. The Trump campaign has argued Harris has been in a “honeymoon” period in which she receives positive headlines that will inflate her numbers. 

The campaign noted in a memo following the Democratic convention that Harris is likely to receive another boost but maintains it will be small and temporary. Trump campaign pollsters pointed to several past elections in which a candidate was leading after their party’s convention, sometimes by large margins, and eventually lost in November. 

Polls have shown some indications of Harris receiving at least a small postconvention jump. 

Harris’s support in the DDHQ average began to level off after she surpassed 49 percent in mid-August. But her lead has still ticked up as Trump’s support has slipped from about 46.5 percent to 45.5 since then. 

She has a slightly more modest lead of about 3.5 points over Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average, where both candidates’ support has been mostly steady. But Harris’s lead has still grown a bit from just under 3 points before the convention began on Aug. 19. 

Silver has her lead rising from 2.3 points before the convention to 3.8 points now. 

Even if the boost is temporary, it is surely welcome to Democrats after many viewed President Biden’s chances of defeating Trump as dire before he dropped out of the race. Biden had been trailing by 3 points nationally on average on the day he announced the suspension of his campaign. 

But the margins Harris has put up in various polls since the convention will not allow her campaign to breathe easily. Instead, they signal a grueling finish to the race. 

A poll from The Wall Street Journal conducted entirely after the convention gave Harris a 1-point lead nationally in a head-to-head match-up and a 2-point lead when other third-party candidates were included, both well within the margin of error. 

A Quinnipiac University poll from after the convention found Harris with the same leads in both situations. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll did give her a larger lead of 5 points in a head-to-head match-up. 

More battleground states have started to lean in her direction but paint a picture of a tight contest. The vice president was ahead by 2 points among registered voters in the seven main battlegrounds and 1 point among likely voters, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.

A survey from The Hill and Emerson College Polling showed Harris ahead in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada and Trump just ahead in Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with the candidates tied in Pennsylvania — but all of them within the margin of error. 

On the bright side for Harris, the Sun Belt states of Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina are firmly in play after they had been getting away from Biden a bit. A Fox News poll showed her just ahead in the first three and just behind in North Carolina. 

The polls had suggested Biden’s paths to victory were dwindling in his last weeks in the race, with his best bet in taking the three “blue wall” states. Even if Harris is receiving a temporary bounce, her numbers are strong enough that all seven swing states are back in play.

What the polls will do in the weeks ahead is certainly unclear as at least one presidential debate is on the calendar, and this unprecedented election could still yield more surprises. But both Harris and Trump have multiple paths to reaching 270 electoral votes to clinch the presidency; their campaigning so far signals they know it.