Harris vs. Trump: What the polls tell us

President Biden is out of the 2024 race and backing Vice President Harris to take over his mantle in November, raising questions about what the polling can help us glean about her chances against former President Trump.

Though Harris still has to win over enough delegates before the party’s national convention next month in order to score the official nod, she’s the heir apparent now. This will come as a relief to many Democrats who were alarmed by Biden’s dismal polling numbers in recent weeks.

But the vice president would face her own challenges if she were to go head-to-head with Trump, according to the latest polling averages from Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) and The Hill.

Trump, who officially accepted the Republican nomination at the GOP convention last week, leads Harris by 2 points, according to the aggregate of national polls, 47 percent support to 45 percent. That’s around the same as Trump’s 2.5-point lead over Biden, with 46 percent support to the incumbent’s 43.5. 

With independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the mix, Trump boasts a 6-point lead over Harris, 43 percent support to 37 percent, while Kennedy sits at 6 percent. 

The vice president’s favorability sits at 38 percent, slightly lower than Biden’s 41 percent.

“Her favorability nationally mirrors Biden’s — it’s not great,” Scott Tranter, director of data science at DDHQ, said a week before the news of Biden’s exit broke. “Her upside, though, is she doesn’t have all the baggage Biden has, and voters are going to take a fresh look at her.”

Trump’s 2-point edge over Harris in the averages is notably down from around 8 points at the start of the year, and other recent surveys offer her supporters some cause for hope.

In an Economist/YouGov survey taken mid-July, roughly 8 in 10 Democrats said they approve of Harris becoming the nominee if Biden steps aside, and a little more than a quarter said they think she’d be more likely than Biden to win against Trump.

A CBS News poll released last week found Harris performing better than Biden against Trump, with Harris behind by 3 points and Biden trailing by 5 points.

A CNN poll released after the first presidential debate, during which Biden’s disappointing performance renewed talk of taking him off the ticket, found Harris running closer to Trump than Biden was. She came in just 2 points behind the former president, while Biden was 6 points behind. 

The Democratic pollster Bendixen & Amandi Inc. put the vice president ahead of Trump by 1 point in a survey published earlier this month.

Harris is also “the easiest one” among the prominent Democrats being floated for the hypothetical nominee to slide into Biden’s place, given the mechanics of the process, Tranter said. 

She’s best positioned to take over Biden’s campaign apparatus and Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraising system without excessive legal entanglements, strategists have noted, and her agenda is already obviously aligned with Biden’s. 

The vice president is also 59, more than 20 years younger than Biden, as well as a Black woman — attributes that could appeal to key demographics within the Democratic base.  

“When you have a young Black woman on the ticket in place of Joe Biden, it really eliminates a lot of the arguments that Republicans are going to use against [Biden],” Democratic strategist Michael Starr Hopkins said. “She has the ability to run on all the positives of his record without health being the main focus.”

At the same time, hypothetical Trump-Harris polling in individual states indicates a tough fight. Biden was trailing Trump in several key battlegrounds before dropping out of the race, and the latest numbers suggest a similar uphill climb for Harris. 

Trump boasts leads of roughly 9 points in Nevada, 7 points in Arizona and 6 points in Georgia, according to DDHQ averages. 

Trump is up by 4 points in Pennsylvania, 1 point in Wisconsin and less than half a point in Michigan — while Harris notches a 3-point lead in Virginia. 

Overall, though, there’s still not a lot of polling data testing a Harris-Trump contest, both nationally and at the state level, and those averages are based on six polls or fewer in each state. 

DDHQ forecast models are set to go dark for a couple weeks to gather more data, the team said, given the historic change to the race. 

The speculation has brought new media and voter attention to Harris, hinting at the scrutiny that would only intensify if she were to indeed surge into Biden’s place as the party nominee. It remains unclear how the growing media attention could impact her poll numbers. 

Attention has already turned to the question of who could join Harris as her running mate — and while Trump’s vice president pick wasn’t expected to hugely swing voters, the decision could potentially be more impactful on a Harris ticket.

Tranter argued the spotlight offers Harris “an opportunity to reset herself.”

“I don’t expect the polling to show that she is outright beating Trump, but she’s going to have a whole campaign and a fresh start, not going to have to answer questions about whether she’s mentally there to serve,” he said of the possibility that she becomes the nominee.

Harris now has to secure the support of the more than 3,800 delegates Biden won throughout the primary process as the party heads into the Democratic National Convention, set for August in Chicago. Though most Democratic delegates have pledged to choose Biden, they’re not bound to do so in the unprecedented case of him stepping aside.