The U.S. presidential election is still a close call, with 45 days until voters go to the polls. This despite Kamala Harris posting one of her most encouraging poll numbers since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee nearly two months ago.
In another momentous week that began with a suspected second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Guardian’s latest 10-day poll shows Harris widening her lead to 2.6 points, 48.5% to 45.9%.
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That’s still within the margin of error, but it’s an improvement from the 0.9 point lead Harris had last week. It’s also a significant shift from the statistical tie two weeks ago, before the candidates held their only scheduled televised debate on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia.
Polls show that voters overwhelmingly believe Harris won that meeting, while Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, effectively sabotaged himself by making off-topic digressions about the size of his rallies and making universally debunked claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets.
A New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena national poll released on Thursday showed the candidates tied at 47% — actually a slight improvement for Harris compared to the same poll conducted before the debate, when Trump had a one-point lead.
Other national polls have been more positive for Harris. A Morning Consult poll — based on more than 11,000 respondents — gave her a six-point lead, 51% to 45%, the largest she’s had since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
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There are other underlying trends that give Harris reason to be cheerful, albeit cautious.
One of these is her positive performance in the crucial states, the key arenas that will determine the outcome of the November 5 elections according to the US Electoral College.
The same New York Times/Siena poll that showed the two candidates tied nationally showed Harris with a four percentage point lead, 50%-46%, in Pennsylvania, a swing state seen by many commentators as the key state for securing the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House.
The research is supported by a separate Quinnipiac poll, which shows Harris with a six-point lead in the state, 51% to 45%
Additionally, the Quinnipiac poll gives Harris a 5% and 1% lead, respectively, in two neighboring battleground states, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Capturing all three states — sometimes called the “blue wall” by Democrats — would be enough to give Harris a narrow Electoral College victory without her having to win any of the four Southern Sun Belt states (North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona) where the two candidates are statistically tied.
Amid all this optimism, however, comes a warning for the vice president. Trump has significantly exceeded pollsters’ predictions in the blue-wall states in the last two elections. In 2016, he won all three states, but in 2020 he lost them all by about one percentage point. Polls showed Biden with a much larger lead then.
Still, pollsters are signaling a shift from past elections that favors Harris, undermining the Republicans’ perceived lead in the Electoral College. Trump won in 2016 despite receiving 2.7 million fewer votes nationwide than his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Nate Cohn, the New York Times’ chief polling analyst, called Harris’ lead in Pennsylvania, while he is tied with Trump nationally, “a puzzlement” but said it was in line with most other polls.
“Over the past month, many polls have shown Ms. Harris doing relatively poorly nationally, but doing well in the northern states where the election is still uncertain,” he wrote.
“What is clear is that recent higher-quality poll results are very different from those of the last presidential election. If true, it would suggest that Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College, relative to the popular vote, has declined significantly since 2020.”
Harris has another clear reason for complacency: The gap with Trump over which candidate is most trustworthy on economic matters has been closed.
Surveys show that the economy is still the biggest issue in the eyes of most voters. It brings to mind the mantra of James Carville, the Democratic operative who helped chart Bill Clinton’s 1992 election victory: “It’s the economy, idiot.”
Still, the large lead Trump held over Biden — amid persistent concerns about inflation and rising costs of living — appears to have eroded since Harris was nominated, separate surveys show.
An Associated Press-Norc poll released Friday found that 41% of voters trusted Harris to manage the economy, while 43% favored Trump. That’s a nominal gap given the ex-president’s efforts to smear his opponent with Biden’s unpopular economic record.
The results confirmed an earlier Morning Consult poll that found the candidates tied at 46% on economic confidence, while a post-debate FT-Michigan Ross poll actually gave Harris a slight lead.
According to Sofia Baig, economist and author of the Morning Consult study, Harris successfully deflected blame for Biden’s policies while still winning over voters with her promises to impose stricter regulations on prescription drug overages and costs.
“While many voters are dissatisfied with the current economy, they say Vice President Kamala Harris is less accountable than President Biden,” she wrote. “Throughout this election cycle, voters consistently said they trusted former President Trump over Biden to manage the economy, but Harris has closed that gap.”
