President Biden’s historic announcement that he was dropping out of the 2024 race shook up a race that remained largely static until last month.
Polls began to emerge in the days following Biden’s decision, offering clues about how the race between Vice President Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and former President Trump will play out.
Overall, they provided good news for Harris and the Democrats. In several polls, Harris performed at least slightly better than Biden against Trump before the incumbent pulled away. But election forecasts remain offline as analysts recalibrate their models for a new showdown, meaning time is needed to better understand what these numbers mean for November.
Scott Tranter, director of data science at Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), said he could argue that Trump or Harris are in the preferable position in the race, highlighting how uncertain the race is.
“I could probably give you a good point or two if any of them, and that’s the mark of a true 50-50 race,” he said.
In the weeks leading up to Biden’s calamitous debate with Trump just over a month ago, the general trend in the polls was for the two candidates to be locked in a fierce clash at the national level, with Trump possibly slightly ahead. He had a clearer lead among the half-dozen or so swing states that are likely to decide the winner of the election.
That started to change a bit after the debate, with Trump taking a bigger lead in national and state polls. Some polls in more traditionally liberal-leaning states such as New Hampshire and Maine also began to show that Biden’s lead over Trump was narrowing, giving Republicans hope that they could step in and expand their map.
Trump’s lead in national polls grew especially as public and private calls within the Democratic Party grew for Biden to no longer be the nominee. The GOP nominee led in the national average of polls from Decision Desk HQ and The Hill by 3.3 points on July 21, the day Biden announced he would end his re-election bid.
Trump had never enjoyed such a large lead in the average during the race.
After Biden dropped out, election forecasting models were shut down. Trump leads Harris in the national DDHQ polling average by 2 points, but that includes relatively few polls released since last Sunday.
The Democratic rally around Harris as the presumptive nominee was rapid last week, starting with Biden’s immediate support for her shortly after announcing the end of his candidacy. And this seems to be reflected in some of the polls released last week, which show greater support for the Democratic candidate.
One of the first national polls released after Harris threw her hat into the ring showed her ahead of Trump nationwide. She led by 2 points in a Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was within the margin of error. The same poll conducted a week earlier had Trump ahead of Biden by 2 points and tied with Harris.
Equally notable, Harris led by 4 points in a three-way race, including independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In many cases, when Biden led Trump in a head-to-head matchup, the former president’s standing relative to Biden improved as the Respondents were able to choose from additional candidates.
The majority of respondents said Harris is “mentally sharp and able to handle challenges,” 7 points above the percentage who said the same about Trump. Meanwhile, just a fifth said the same about Biden.
A survey released Thursday by The New York Times and Siena College, which FiveThirtyEight classified as the most reliable pollster, gave Trump a 1-point lead, 48% support versus 47%, among likely voters. The advantage reaches 2 points among registered voters. Both are much narrower than the 6-point lead among likely voters and the 9-point lead among registered voters that Trump had in the last poll taken before Biden dropped out.
Similarly, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that Trump and Harris were almost exactly tied, with Trump up 1.
As some of these polls began to come out, Trump’s pollster issued a memo predicting a “Harris honeymoon” phase that would see her poll numbers increase as she received widespread media coverage. But he said the phase will be temporary and will not change the “fundamentals” of the test.
Tranter agreed that Harris is in a “honeymoon phase,” but noted that what may be key is how long that phase lasts. He said even if it only lasts 60 days, early voting will have already begun. He said it has momentum, which can be reversed, but could still impact results.
Polls in key battleground states also showed that Harris performed competitively with Trump, in certain cases improving Biden’s numbers in states that were moving a little further out of his reach.
A poll from Emerson College Polling and The Hill released last week showed Trump leading Harris in most key states, but within the margin of error in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, the last of which Biden has regularly trailed Trump throughout the campaign. . Trump and Harris were tied in Wisconsin, and he led by 5 points in Arizona.
Overall, these numbers represent a significant improvement for Democrats compared to a similar poll conducted earlier this month featuring Biden. Harris edged Biden by 3 points in Michigan and Pennsylvania, 4 points in Arizona and Wisconsin, and 5 points in Georgia.
Fox News polls in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — three states that gave Trump the presidency in 2016 before swinging back to Biden in 2020 — found the race equally competitive. Trump was up 1 point in Wisconsin and tied with Harris in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Tranter pointed out that polls in bluer states like Virginia and Minnesota “swung back” toward Harris, at least initially, after some showed Trump possibly making inroads in them against Biden.
“Nationally, we have Harris still trailing Trump, but by a much smaller margin than Biden was trailing Trump,” he said. “This indicates that we should see this trend continue downward in individual battleground states.”
At the same time as the race tightened, both Harris and Trump saw an increase in their popularity.
Trump’s favorability rating on average from DDHQ and The Hill reached 45 percent following the assassination attempt on him at his rally in Pennsylvania this month, while his unfavorable rating fell from 57 percent to 51 percent.
Harris’ rating especially rose as calls for Biden to step aside grew, reaching 44 percent in the polling average. Polls last week noted this increase, and 7 in 10 Democratic respondents in the Times/Siena poll said they want the party to consolidate around Harris.
Tranter said Harris’ favorability numbers are better than Biden’s, but still not far ahead of Trump’s. Both are slightly submerged with their favorability, but within each other’s reach.
Still, all of these numbers were obtained before the Trump-Harris race could fully begin. Harris is just beginning to ramp up her campaign with rallies and ads hitting the airwaves, and Republicans are still honing their attacks on her after previously running against a different candidate.
The Harris campaign could increase their numbers further, or the attacks could cause them to decline.
“There are a few more innings left in this campaign cycle for these numbers to go up or down, but I would say there is an equal chance they will go up and down,” Tranter said.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
