Can Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump? Latest poll updates from the 2024 election

Vice President Kamala Harris is making a bid for the White House with running mate Tim Walz after replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket just a few months before Election Day.

But with the Democratic National Convention underway in Chicago this week, a new poll suggests that voters are not convinced on Democratic policy approaches; even as independent voters creep towards the left.

So how will Harris actually fare against Donald Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, this November?

Harris now has a 2.8-point lead over Trump in the latest average of national polls, collated by FiveThirtyEight. On average, Harris has been marginally ahead of Trump in national polls, though the race remains tight.

A new Morning Consult megapoll of 11,501 registered voters even has Harris +4 points ahead, at 48 percent of the vote to Trump’s 44 percent.

This poll shows that independent voters are also leaning more towards Harris, though there has been significant variation between different surveys of the elusive voter group.

Capturing the independent vote will be crucial for either Harris or Trump to take the lead in this election. This is the most likely group to vote for Robert F Kennedy Jr., with 1 in 10 independents currently saying they will vote for a third-party candidate.

It remains to be seen what would happen if RFK Jr. drops out of the race, but as it stands, Harris may be slowly carving out a small lead among independents.

Meanwhile, exclusive polling from Savanta showed that voters still trust the Republican Party more to handle major policy issues like the economy, inflation, jobs, and crime.

Of the top five issues on the ballot, the Democrats only lead on healthcare, despite the fact that Harris appears to be striding ahead in the polls.

Interestingly, though, registered Republicans are not sold on some of the party’s most controversial issues; around 1 in 4 Republicans would rather place their trust in Democrats to handle climate change and culture war issues like LGBTQ+ rights.

Demographics 

A fresh CBS/YouGov poll (up to August 16) has Harris at a 3-point lead and shows a substantial gender divide is emerging between the two candidates, with more men supporting Trump and more women voting for Harris.

Trump’s key supporters remain male voters, the 45-64 age group, and white voters with no college education. But in the last group, Trump appears to have lost some of his leverage over Harris when compared to Biden.

Harris polls best with young voters, female voters, and Black voters, among whom Harris has a +65 point lead.

While Harris and Biden both typically led among white college-educated voters, the recent CBS poll suggests that Harris has only a +5 point lead over Trump in this group — a far cry from the 20+ point lead she showed in other polls a few weeks ago.

Fighting in the battlegrounds

In the seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the war is still being waged between Democrat and Republican campaigns.

Research from the Cook Political Report show that Harris has a lead in six out of seven states, with Trump holding strong in Nevada.

The poll shows Harris’s strongest lead in Arizona, where Biden won by just 0.4 percent in 2020.

This is a substantial swing from the same polls in May, with a Trump-Biden matchup, where Trump led in six states and tied in Wisconsin.

Yet polling in swing states continues to show variation from pollster to pollster, with a YouGov/CBS poll conducted up to the same date (August 2) suggesting that neither candidate had a significant lead in any of the battlegrounds.

Overall, battleground polls have consistently shown that Harris has picked up momentum from her predecessor’s trailing support, and is on-track to lead Trump in some states

What do voters think?

A poll from Emerson College (August 12-14) shows that Kamala Harris is the only candidate of whom voters have an overall favorable opinion, at +2 percent.

This is significantly more positive than both Trump and his running mate Vance, who have a net -10 unfavorable rating, according to the poll of 1,000 US likely voters.

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Meanwhile, VP pick Walz has an overall neutral favorability rating, with 39 percent of voters holding a favorable view and 39 percent holding an unfavorable view.

Interestingly, one in five voters (22 percent) said they had never heard of Walz, a week after his selection. For JD Vance the number was lower, at 12 percent.

When asked how much they approve of how incumbent Joe Biden is doing as president, voters showed net disapproval of -14 percent.