Donald Trump v Kamala Harris: who’s leading the polls?

Last updated on October 3rd 2024

Latest polling averages, %

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On November 5th Americans will elect their next president. Until June 27th it seemed that the match-up would be between the same two candidates as in 2020: Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent, and Donald Trump, his Republican predecessor in office. But that night Mr Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance. It immediately made Democrats question Mr Biden’s fitness for the task. On July 21st he bowed to pressure and withdrew from the race. He endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic candidate.
The chart above shows the latest national polling averages. At the Democratic National Convention in August Ms Harris formally clinched the nomination. She is now racing to define herself to voters and counter Mr Trump’s campaign. Mr Biden’s presidency has been associated with high inflation, big industrial-policy bills and turmoil abroad, things which Republicans are seeking to pin on Ms Harris too. But she has one clear advantage over Mr Biden: her age. At 59 she is over two decades younger than he is, and 18 years younger than Mr Trump.

Our latest coverage of the race

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Mr Trump, meanwhile, has a dismal record: supporters tried to overturn his election loss in 2020; he faces federal charges over his alleged participation in that scheme and has been convicted of felonies for hush-money payments connected to his 2016 presidential campaign. On July 13th, at a rally in Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old man shot at Mr Trump, grazing the former president’s ear and killing a bystander. Politicians of all stripes urged allies and rivals to lower the political temperature. Mr Trump, who showed rare restraint in the aftermath of the shooting, has since returned to his divisive rhetoric in speeches. In a fiery televised debate on September 10th, Ms Harris made Mr Trump look out of his depth. And on September 15th Secret Service agents spotted another would-be assassin with a rifle beside the golf course in Florida where Mr Trump was playing, raising fears of more political violence (the suspect was quickly arrested).
The Economist is tracking the race. As well as an average of the polls, you can also see historic polling data for Mr Biden and Mr Trump, more recent polling since Ms Harris entered the contest, and key dates in the race and candidate biographies. Stay informed with our weekday newsletter, The US in brief. And if you are interested in contests elsewhere, see our election tracker hub.

Voting intention, %

Editor’s note: polls appear according to the last day on which they were surveying voters.

Key dates

Jul 15th, Republican National Convention
A four-day pageant, the Republicans formally selected their presidential and vice-presidential candidates in Milwaukee.
Aug 19th, Democratic National Convention
As at the Republican convention a month earlier, the Democrats formally nominated their presidential candidate in Chicago.
Sep 10th, second presidential debate
The two main candidates went head to head on ABC News a week after Labor Day (traditionally when Americans begin to pay attention to the election). They exchanged personal attacks and sparred over their visions for America, but Ms Harris forced Mr Trump on the defensive by bringing up the former president’s legal woes and stance on abortion.
Nov 5th, election day
Polls open on a Tuesday in early November, though early voting and mail-in ballot initiatives will mean many Americans will have already voted. Counting ballots will go on for weeks in some states.
Jan 6th 2025, results certification
Once all votes are counted, the results must be certified by Congress. Normally a pro-forma event, in 2021 Mr Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building to stop the certification. He is on trial for his alleged role in the attack.
Jan 20th 2025, inauguration
The new president will be sworn into office on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

The candidates

Kamala Harris

Vice-president

At 59, Ms Harris is more than two decades younger than Joe Biden, whom she replaced as the Democratic nominee. Her mother was an endocrinologist born in India; her father is an economist born in Jamaica. In California she won elections as a prosecutor by leaning to the right on criminal-justice issues, while also appealing to Democrats, and was elected as the state’s attorney-general in 2010. Since she came to Washington, first as a senator in 2017, Ms Harris has been most effective at debates and hearings, where her skills as a litigator are on display.

She is a creature of institutional politics, not a visionary or an ideologue, and has struggled to define herself on a national stage. Her presidential run in 2020 crashed badly. As vice-president she is tied to the Biden administration’s record, which is unpopular despite the major legislation it passed to onshore chip manufacturing and invest in green energy. If she is to beat Mr Trump she will need to answer his attack lines on immigration directly and lay out a more ambitious domestic policy agenda than Mr Biden was able to communicate.

Donald Trump

Former president

Mr Trump’s extraordinary campaign follows his no less remarkable term as America’s 45th president, which concluded shortly after his supporters staged a violent attack on the Capitol. His alleged role in instigating the attack and a broader effort to overturn results of the 2020 election resulted in two criminal indictments, in federal court and Georgia state court. A judge he appointed dismissed a further felony indictment against him, though prosecutors are appealing. The 78-year-old denies all wrongdoing. Mr Trump is a billionaire who made (and lost) much of his money in real estate, before he became a reality-TV star. This time his campaign pairs familiar culture-war issues (building a border wall, “left-wing gender insanity”) with fresh grievances (against the lawyers prosecuting his cases and the judges overseeing them).

On July 13th a gunman shot Mr Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, grazing the former president’s ear but otherwise leaving him unharmed (a bystander was killed). Afterwards Mr Trump briefly seemed a changed candidate, trying to present himself as a unifier in a speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee. But he went back to his past ways quickly, throwing insults at his political opponents.

Methodology

To build our poll tracker, we adapted the work of political scientists Simon Jackman and Luke Mansillo, of the University of Sydney, and Jack Bailey, of the University of Manchester. Their approach treats each poll as an imperfect estimate of some “true” support for each candidate. A statistical model is used to estimate the “true” voting intention, given recent polls. The model takes into account differences in methodology between polls and the partisan tilt of individual polling firms’ output.

For the purposes of estimating characteristics such as pollster-level biases, our tracker incorporates surveys that included Donald Trump and Joe Biden up until July 21st, when Mr Biden withdrew from the election. However, it bases its estimate of the race between Mr Trump and Kamala Harris solely on polls conducted after that date. The discontinuity visible on July 21st reflects the change in the Democratic nominee.

In cases where a pollster releases multiple results on the same day, we prefer polls which exclude third parties. Third-party support tends to decline as the election approaches, partly because they may not appear on the ballot in many states. We also prefer surveys of “likely voters”, rather than “registered voters” or all adults. This is to capture election-day dynamics and the importance of turnout in American elections.

Sources: FiveThirtyEight; YouGov; national polls; The Economist