What a difference a month makes!
Donald Trump’s long-standing and seemingly-insurmountable polling lead has vanished over the course of four weeks while the 2024 general election now looms specter-like just over two months away, with early voting set to begin in some states as soon as this month.
A curious voter would have to go back more than a year to find the former president down in the polling averages by as much as it seems he currently is, and the best he could claim for himself at the moment is a statistical margin-of-error tie or a questionable back pat from known polling partisans.
The newest numbers are even worse for the 45th president on a case-by-case basis than they are on average. According to the most recently released national surveys, Trump could be trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by upwards of 5 points.
That’s a sharp reversal from the far-off and bygone days of literally just this past July, when Trump’s “Make America Great Again, Part II” was the summer blockbuster and led President Joe Biden’s floundering made-for-TV campaign sequel by an average of three and a half points.
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken immediately after the Democratic National Convention and released late last week, showed that Harris has “engineered an 8-point turnaround in the race for president” and now leads Trump by five points, 48% – 43%.
“With the ‘Brat Summer’ of Kamala Harris memes and emojis winding down, young people, persons of color, and low-income households have swung dramatically toward the vice president. These same demographics were emphasized and woven together by numerous speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said with that survey’s release.
Since Harris joined the race, according to Suffolk University pollsters, voters who make less than $20,000 per year moved away from Trump by a 26-point margin, 18 to 34-year-old voters by 24 points, Hispanic voters by 18, and Black voters by 17.
Harris’ support among at least one segment of the Black voting population is still trailing her boss’, the Suffolk poll showed.
“In 2020, Biden won by +85 points among Black voters to win the Electoral College, a margin which Harris has not been able to win as of yet, due to a small fraction of young Black men who are holding back support for Harris or even voting for Trump,” pollsters wrote.
A random national sample of about 2,500 American adults conducted by ABC News and Ipsos and released on Sunday showed Trump trailing his new opponent by at least four points. When asked which candidate they would support “if the 2024 presidential election were being held today,” 49% of those surveyed picked Harris, versus 45% for Trump.
When the pool in the ABC/Ipsos poll is limited to just currently registered voters, it also shows a five point lead for Harris, with 50% choosing the sitting vice president versus 45% for the former President.
Those same pollsters, in a survey taken in July just weeks before President Joe Biden announced he would bow to party pressure and step aside from his campaign for a second term, showed Trump was up by one point, 42% – 41%.
Recent surveys of likely voters released by the Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University show Trump trailing by one point.
Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said that means the race has drawn to about even.
“Conventions done, debates in the planning, rhetoric getting rougher, there’s a slight numerical difference, but it is essentially a tie as the presidential race roars toward November 5th,” he said
According to a list of national polls maintained by RealClearPolitics, Trump won only one nonpartisan survey taken in August — conducted HarrisX (no relation to the VP) on August 19 — and has otherwise seen the other candidate pulling away from him.
Even when including a series of partisan Rasmussen Reports polls in their average — which showed Trump up by four, three, and two — and a Fox News survey, RealClearPolitics shows Trump is trailing Harris in a multi-candidate field by an average of 2.3 points, and by 1.8 points in a head-to-head match up.
A separate poll conducted by Scott Rasmussen on behalf of the Napolitan Institute and surveying more than 2,400 likely voters ahead of Harris’ recent CNN interview showed Trump down by three points.
“It remains impossible to know who will win in November. Given the late entry of Harris into the race, events like the upcoming debate on ABC could have a bigger impact than usual. And, of course, events in the real world like the economy and campus protests could also shift the dynamics,” the Institute said in a release.
ABC owned polling aggregator 538 also shows Trump’s lead disappearing along with Biden’s candidacy, whether it be in a two-way race or in a multi-candidate contest. Their average shows Harris up by 3.2 points, 47.1% – 43.8%.
Trump has not been this far behind in polling in more than a year. As of September 1, 2023, Trump was trailing Biden by an average of about a point. Weeks later the 45th President took the lead in averages and most individual polls, and kept it for most of a year. Since Biden was pulled from the mound in late July and Harris given the ball, it’s been an entirely different numbers game.
Trump and Harris are scheduled to meet for a debate on Sept. 10.
