After all the political turmoil of the past month, Thursday’s latest New York Times/Siena College poll is full of findings we’ve never seen before this cycle, with one exception: Who is leading the presidential race?
The poll found Donald Trump ahead of Kamala Harris by 1 percentage point, 48% to 47%, among likely voters. Aside from the Democratic nominee’s name, “Trump +1” is a result that could have come from any other Times/Siena poll before President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate.
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But question after question, there are big shifts from previous Times-Siena polls, all of which were conducted before Harris effectively secured her party’s presidential nomination, before the Republican convention, and before the attempted assassination of Trump. Even Harris’s 1-point deficit represents a significant improvement for Democrats over Biden’s 6-point deficit in our last Times/Siena poll.
These events make it difficult to know what to make of the results of recent polls, including this one. The survey is a useful marker of where the race stands now, but there is no reason to be certain that this will be where the race stands once the dust settles.
While the outcome between Harris and Trump may seem familiar, the poll suggests there is still much uncertainty about the political situation.
— Trump reaches peak popularity. Overall, 48% of registered voters say they have a favorable opinion of him, up from 42% in our last poll (after the debate, but before the convention and assassination attempt). It’s his highest positive rating in a Times/Siena poll, which previously had his positive ratings between 39% and 45%.
— Harris is on the rise. Her ratings have risen even more than Trump’s. Overall, 46% of registered voters have a positive opinion of her, up from 36% when we last asked her in February. Just 49% have an unfavorable opinion, down from 54% when we last surveyed her. Equally important, her positive rating is higher than Biden’s. In fact, it’s higher than his ranking in any Times/Siena poll since September 2022, which happened to be the last time Biden led a national Times/Siena poll of registered voters.
— The national political climate is slightly rosier. The share of voters who say the country is on the “right track” has risen to 27% — hardly a cheery, smiling crowd, but still the highest since the 2022 midterm elections. Biden’s approval and positive ratings have also risen. The ranks of the dual haters have dwindled: With both Harris and Trump in the lead, the share of voters who dislike either candidate has fallen to 8%, down from 20% in Times/Siena polls so far this year.
With all of these underlying changes in candidate attitudes, there’s no reason to assume that this familiar Trump +1 result means the race has simply returned to where it was before the debate. For now, these developments have largely been undone, but whether that will still be the case in a few weeks is much harder to say.
By the book, Trump’s gains over the past month look like a classic “convention bounce,” perhaps with added goodwill from his survival of the assassination attempt. Historically, bounces tend to fade, but not necessarily entirely.
What happened to Harris this past week is not something any book would follow. She will likely continue to ride the momentum of her new candidacy for a while, but after that, anything is possible. Only time will tell how the public will respond to her as they hear her — and the attacks on her — in the days and weeks ahead.
Below you will find some results of our survey.
Yes, voters seem happy with the Democratic makeover
I don’t think the Times/Siena poll has ever found 87% of voters who approve of anything, but that’s the share who say they approve of Biden’s decision to remain out of the presidential race. Only 9% disapprove.
Democrats, meanwhile, are ready for Kamala. Nearly four-fifths say the party should nominate her for president, compared with 14% who say they should nominate someone else. A slightly larger 27% say the party should encourage a competitive nominating process, but 70% say the party should unite behind Harris and make her the nominee quickly.
A more typical demographic divide
If you’ve been reading The New York Times for a long time, you know that we’ve been tracking Biden’s weakness among young, black, Hispanic and low-income voters for nearly a year.
It will be some time — perhaps more than a month, given the potential volatility ahead — before we have a good sense of the demographic contours of this new race. But in this poll at least, the Harris-Trump matchup presents a different, more typical demographic divide.
In the poll, Harris is doing better among young (18 to 29) and Hispanic voters than Biden has in any poll this year. She is doing better among nonvoters than Biden did in all but one Times/Siena poll over the same period. Conversely, she is doing worse among white working-class voters and voters over 65 than Biden did in all but one earlier Times/Siena poll.
Of course, this is just one study; results from individual subgroups of a single poll are noisy and subject to a large margin of error. But there is good reason to think that these demographic shifts are part of something real. The findings are consistent with those of previous Times/Siena polls. And more generally, they are consistent with the expected relative strengths of a black woman (who also has Native American ancestry) from California in her 50s compared with a white man from Scranton, Pennsylvania, in his 80s.
Will Kennedy help Harris?
Harris even tied with Trump when all minor party candidates were included, along with independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Harris was at 44% and Trump was at 43% (Harris’ lead is zero if we use the exact numbers, 43.5% to 43.2%), with Kennedy at 5%. That’s Kennedy’s lowest count since we started including him in our polls.
Trump led in the two-way race — but not in the multicandidate race — because he won Kennedy’s small support by more than a 2-to-1 ratio. It’s a small sample size, but it’s Trump’s biggest advantage among Kennedy supporters in our polls so far.
It’s just one poll, but there’s some truth to the idea that Kennedy’s presence in the race could help Harris more clearly. Throughout the race, Kennedy’s candidacy has had more appeal on the right than the left. In this poll, for example, Kennedy’s favorability rating is positive among Republicans but negative among Democrats. Still, he had a relatively even score with Biden and Trump, as Kennedy managed to win over a significant number of the disproportionately young voters who were disaffected with Biden.
Harris, however, doesn’t necessarily have the same vulnerability. If she appeals sufficiently to young, disaffected voters who tend to lean Democratic, Kennedy might not eat away at her support — and draw disproportionately from Trump.
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