Originally posted on Forbes.com on Oct. 15th, 2024 by Sara Dorn.

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TOPLINE The race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remains a seeming dead heat less than four weeks before the election according to a string of surveys this month that show Trump has narrowed Harris’ lead in recent weeks.

KEY FACTS

Harris leads by four points in Morning Consult’s weekly poll released Tuesday, a one-point decline from her standing in its two previous polls.

Trump trails Harris 51% to 49% in a Harvard CAPS/Harris survey of registered voters released Monday, after the two were tied in the groups’ September survey.

Trump and Harris were tied at 48% in a new NBC poll of registered voters released Sunday, while an ABC/Ipsos poll, also released Sunday, shows Harris with a two-point (50%-48%) advantage among likely voters, within the ABC poll’s 2.5-point margin of error—a shift after both ABC and NBC showed Harris with a roughly five-point lead last month.

A third poll out Sunday from CBS/YouGov showed Harris leading Trump 51%-48% with likely voters—slightly tighter than Harris’ 52%-48% lead last month—while Harris has a narrower 50%-49% edge in the seven battleground states.

Other polls show the vice president with a larger edge, though the race has tightened in recent weeks: Harris is up four points over Trump, 49% to 45%, in an Economist/YouGov poll of likely voters released Wednesday, after leading him by five points (49% to 46%) in the groups’ Sept. 30 survey.

Harris is up 49% to 46% in a New York Times/Siena poll out Oct. 8, the first time she’s led Trump in the groups’ polling since July.

Three other polls over the past month—a Quinnipiac survey released Sept. 24, a New York Times/Siena poll out Sept. 19 and a CNN/SSRS poll released Sept. 24—showed Trump and Harris tied, while virtually all other polls show Harris ahead.

Harris has erased Trump’s lead over President Joe Biden since announcing her candidacy on July 21, though her edge has decreased slightly over the past two months, peaking at 3.7 points in late August, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted polling average.

WHO IS FAVORED TO WIN THE ELECTION, HARRIS OR TRUMP?

Harris is favored to win 53 times out of 100, compared to 47 for Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast. Political analyst and statistician Nate Silver puts Harris’ odds at 52.2/47.6, writing he’s “never seen an election in which the forecast spent more time in the vicinity of 50/50.”

BIG NUMBER

1.4. That’s how many points Harris leads Trump by in RealClearPolitics’ latest polling average. Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight’s average shows Harris with a 2.5-point lead, and Nate Silver has Harris up 2.9 points in his Silver Bulletin forecast.

HOW DOES HARRIS PERFORM AGAINST TRUMP IN SWING STATES?

Most surveys show Harris leading in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada, while Trump has an advantage in Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages—but all seven swing states are within single digits.

SURPRISING FACT

A poll from NBC News released Sept. 29 found that while Harris still leads Trump among Latinos, the lead is shrinking. The NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll—which was conducted Sept. 16-23 among 1,000 registered Latino voters—showed 54% supported Harris compared with 40% who supported Trump and 6% who said they were unsure who they would vote for. The support for Harris is higher than it was when Biden was running against Trump, NBC said, but is still significantly lower than past leads Democratic candidates have had, including a 36-point lead in 2020 polling and 50-point lead in 2016 polling. The poll had a margin of error of +/-3.1 percentage points.

HOW DID THE DEBATE IMPACT POLLS?

Pre-debate surveys found Harris’ polling surge appeared to plateau, including a NPR/PBS/Marist survey of registered voters taken Sept. 3-5 that showed Harris leading Trump 49% to 48%, down from a three-point lead in August. Most post-debate surveys show the majority of respondents believe Harris won the debate, but not enough to significantly impact the horserace between the two. A New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters released Sept. 19 found the majority of voters in every demographic gave positive reviews of Harris’ Sept. 10 debate performance, with 67% overall saying she did well, compared to 40% who said the same about Trump. Harris was up 52%-46% among likely voters and 51%-47% among registered voters in an ABC News/Ipsos poll taken days following the debate on Sept. 11-13, essentially unchanged from her six-point leads with likely voters in late August and early August ABC/Ipsos surveys—even though 63% of Americans said Harris won last week’s debate.

KEY BACKGROUND

Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 after resisting calls from within his own party for weeks to end his reelection bid in the wake of his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate. He immediately endorsed Harris and she announced plans to seek the nomination. The party quickly coalesced around her, with 99% of Democratic delegates voting to officially nominate her in a virtual roll call prior to the Democratic National Convention in August. Harris tapped Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, weeks after Trump announced Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his pick for vice president. ABC News hosted the first debate between Harris and Trump on Sept. 10 from Philadelphia. Harris’ rise in polls is coupled with an increase in Democratic enthusiasm for the election, which has nearly doubled since Harris’ entrance into the race, from 46% in June to 85% now, while enthusiasm among Republicans has stayed stagnant at 71%, according to a Monmouth University poll released Aug. 14.

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