Polling data released Tuesday showed Vice President Harris leading by three points in a head-to-head 2024 presidential contest against former President Trump and in a six-way contest that includes third-party candidates.
new NPR/PBS News/Marist PollThe poll, conducted Aug. 1-4, 2024, finds Harris leading Trump with 51 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval, with 2 percent of respondents undecided. Harris also leads Trump among independents with 53 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval.
Harris maintained her lead in the multicandidate race with 48 percent support. Trump had 45 percent support, Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had 5 percent, Green Party candidate Jill Stein had 1 percent, and Independent Cornel West and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver both had less than 1 percent.
Among independents, Harris’ lead in the multicandidate race has widened to an 11-point lead over Trump, with 48% favoring her, followed by Kennedy at 12%.
Harris’ head-to-head performance in the August polls was: Last voteThe speech came the day after Biden announced he was dropping out of the race, at which point many in the party had begun rallying around Harris, though she was not yet the official candidate.
Trump won the head-to-head matchup with Harris, 46% to 45%, with 9% of respondents undecided, in a July 22 poll that showed Harris and Trump tied in multi-candidate races at 42%, followed by Kennedy at 7%.
In Last voteA poll conducted July 9 and 10 showed Biden leading Trump by two points, with 50 percent of respondents favored, and 2 percent of respondents undecided. In multi-candidate elections, Trump led Biden 43 percent to 42 percent. Kennedy had 8 percent support, West 3 percent, Stein 2 percent, and Oliver less than 1 percent.
Harris’s rise comes as she has shown growing support among Democrats in polls, including the most recent one conducted in August, just days before she was announced as the running mate.
“For months, the phrase ‘default’ has been used to describe comments about the presidential election, but that’s no longer the case,” Lee Miringoff, president of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said in a press release.
“Democrats have been energized and confident with Harris’s emergence as a top candidate, and the new showdown has piqued interest in the race on both sides,” Miringoff continued.
An average of national polls by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill showed Trump’s approval rating at 47.1 percent and Harris’s at 47 percent.
The poll included 1,513 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
