Democratic convention boosts Harris in polls against Trump, but without a decisive advantage

The technical tie is stubborn. A week after the end of the Democratic convention, and 12 days before the televised debate that will pit the two U.S. presidential candidates against each other, Vice President Kamala Harris maintains the momentum she has built since she became the head of the Democratic ticket, and is slightly advancing in the polls. But Republican candidate Donald Trump, firmly supported by his voters, is not letting her get any further ahead. The tie in voting intention, especially in the swing states that will decide the November election, is almost absolute.

The Democratic candidate appears to have received a certain boost after the success of the Democratic convention in Chicago and a week of mostly positive media coverage. Five polls after the close of the party convention give her a lead over her rival of up to four percentage points, and find Harris gaining ground among women, Latino voters and young people: part of the coalition of minorities that represents the Democratic voter base. These groups had distanced themselves from Joe Biden, whom they considered too old to take on a second term and whose policies — especially around the war in Gaza, in the case of the youngest — they did not necessarily agree with.

According to a poll conducted by Ipsos and published by Reuters on Thursday, the vice president leads her Republican rival nationwide by four percentage points, 45% to 41%, among registered voters. The margin of error for this survey is 2%.

A month ago, the same poll gave Harris a one-percentage-point lead. The new survey finds that the vice president’s rise is driven, above all, by the enthusiasm she arouses among the Democratic grassroots. The candidate saw her voting intention increase among women and Latino voters: among both groups, she leads Trump by 13 percentage points, 49% versus 36%. In July, she led the Republican by nine points among women and only six among Latinos.

Another poll, conducted by Suffolk and published by USA Today, paints a picture in which Harris leads Trump by more than four percentage points, 47.6% to 43.3%. This is a radical turnaround from two months ago, when the Republican was ahead of Biden by three points (41% to 38%) after the televised debate between the two in which the president performed dismally, leading to his withdrawal from the race.

According to this poll, the Democratic candidate has the support of 76% of African-American voters, a gap of 47 percentage points with the support received by Biden and 64 points ahead of Trump. Among young people, Harris leads her Republican rival by 13 points (49%-36%), while two months ago it was the former president who remained in the lead among those under 34 years of age, by 11 percentage points.

Other polls, published by The Economist and Yahoo News, also place the vice president ahead of her rival, although by similar distances to those she already enjoyed before the convention.

Tie in key states

However, the poll results are less flattering for the vice president in the seven key states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona). In these, according to the Reuters poll, the former president is ahead of Harris by two percentage points, 45-43%. The aggregator of electoral polling expert Nate Silver places Harris 3.5 percentage points ahead of Trump (49% versus 45.5%) across the country, but points to much tighter results in the swing states: in Georgia, Trump is ahead by 0.6 percentage points; in North Carolina, the vice president is ahead by just four-tenths.

In a sign of the importance of those key states, Harris was on a bus tour of Georgia on Thursday with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Next week she will travel to Pennsylvania with Biden and also visit Michigan, her campaign has said.

By contrast, a poll for the conservative television network Fox News, released on Wednesday, shows the vice president ahead of her rival in the swing states of Georgia, Nevada (two percentage points) and Arizona (one point) thanks to “strong support among women, African-American voters and young people,” while Trump has a one-point lead in North Carolina. In 2020, the former president won that state by less than one percentage point, while Biden won the remaining three by narrow margins.

The Fox News poll says Harris is the preferred candidate by voters who see her as the most willing to fight for ordinary people and the one who can best unite the country. Those surveyed, on the other hand, lean towards Trump when it comes to managing the economy or the situation at the border.

Predictions for November couldn’t be closer to 50%-50%, says Silver on his blog, Silver Line. Meanwhile, the head of the veteran electoral analysis website Cook Report, Amy Walter, notes that although Harris has been improving her results in the polls since she took over from Biden, Trump has not lost ground either. “The electoral competition is tightening, not because Harris is taking votes away from the former president, but because Democrats and independents with Democratic leanings are returning to the fold,” says this expert.

This week’s polls confirm this. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 73% of Democratic voters say they are more enthusiastic about voting in November now that Harris has entered the race. In March, that poll found that 61% of Democratic voters planned to go to the polls, mainly with the idea of preventing Trump from winning. Now, 52% say they will go to the polls to support Harris, rather than simply to vote against the Republican candidate.

Meanwhile, the technical tie continues, awaiting the possible impact of events on the horizon, including the resurgence of the federal cases against the former president. On Thursday, Harris granted her first formal interview as a presidential hopeful, and told CNN that she is willing to ‘include a Republican’ in her cabinet.

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