Vice President Harris outperformed former President Trump in an average of national polls managed by Decision Desk HQ/The Hill, highlighting the new Democratic presidential candidate’s rapid gains in the polls.
The DDHQ/The Hill poll gave Harris just a 0.3-point lead as of Monday, amid widespread evidence that the new Democratic presidential nominee and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are rising in the polls.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday found Harris holding a 4-point lead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three Midwestern states that make up the so-called “blue wall” that swung to Trump in the 2016 election and then flipped back to Biden in 2020.
Both figures are within the margin of error, but Biden’s numbers show a notable improvement.
A poll last week gave Harris her first lead in the DDHQ/The Hill average in Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral votes and is the most electorally valuable of the battleground states.
Another poll released Monday by a Democratic super PAC gave Harris a nine-point lead over Trump among voters ages 18 to 29, a demographic where Biden has struggled, especially when compared to his recent performance among the Democratic Party’s youngest voters.
Biden’s numbers among those demographics, combined with his trailing performance in national and battleground state polls to Trump, had raised serious doubts among Democrats about whether they could win the November debates. After Biden’s weak performance in one of the debates in late June, Democrats’ anxiety turned to panic.
In the three weeks since Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris, his poll numbers have improved dramatically.
On July 21, when Biden withdrew, Trump held a 2.3-point lead in the head-to-head race in a Decision Desk HQ/The Hill national poll. Harris now holds a 0.3-point lead. If you add in independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Harris leads Trump by 3.7 points as of Monday.
State-by-state polls also offered a bright spot for Harris over Biden, who generally trailed in key states needed to win the Electoral College by margins slightly larger than he did nationally.
Three other key states — Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — appeared to be moving away from Democrats when Biden was the candidate, and early evidence suggests Harris is closing the gap.
Polling in these states has been somewhat limited over the past few weeks, but multiple polls have been released in each state that at least show Harris close to Trump within the margin of error, if not tied or slightly ahead.
With several polls showing the two candidates in a close race in Arizona (the Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll gives Trump a 2-point lead), Trump’s lead in the state has shrunk from more than 5 points to 1.3 points.
An AARP poll released Thursday found Harris and Trump tied in Georgia, with Trump leading by an average of 2.6 points.
Two Nevada polls projected a close race for the state’s six electoral votes.
Walz’s selection also gave Democrats some breathing room in their comfort with Minnesota, a state that has voted Democratic for president for decades, but Republicans had signaled they expected to target the state as Biden struggles.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an election prediction website, on Wednesday changed its assessment of the Minnesota election from “Democrat advantage” to “likely Democratic win” based on Harris’ selection of Walz and several polls showing a Democratic chance of victory.
Republicans say Harris is in a honeymoon period that won’t last and that her approval ratings will become more realistic.
Tony Fabrizio, a Trump pollster, released a memo shortly after Harris joined the race predicting that her approval ratings would rise due to positive press galvanizing Democrats until the race “settles down.” But Fabrizio said this wouldn’t fundamentally change the race.
“She has yet to answer any questions from the media. She has not given any interviews. She has kept her history secret. At some point she has to answer those questions,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, said on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.”
Republicans, including Vance, have been pressuring Harris to answer more questions about her policy positions and have called on media outlets to hold her accountable for not yet giving interviews. Harris said Thursday she hopes to give a full interview by the end of the month.
All of this comes ahead of next week’s Democratic National Convention, a key part of the election calendar that typically gives Democrats an extra boost in the polls. Even a slight uptick after the convention could get Democratic hopes higher than they have in recent weeks.
Such increases are usually temporary and could return to the status quo at some point, as Republicans expect, but the convention is just one of several upcoming events, along with the Harris-Trump debate, that could further upset the race in unexpected ways.
