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, according to The Hill.
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.
MNA/PR