I am on record warning people against paying attention to the polls before Labor Day, as that’s about when the bulk of voters start paying attention to the election. That is still the case, but now is a good time to lay down a baseline marker. Vice President Kamala Harris has been in the race for three and a half weeks, both tickets are established, and the Democratic National Convention begins this upcoming Monday.
As far as baselines go, it’s a good one.
This cycle, I will be using 538’s poll aggregator to compile this chart. No aggregator is perfect, but theirs is good enough. And as always, polling involves a margin of error, so none of us should rest easy with any of these numbers, especially since the dynamics this year are unprecedented. Pollsters may struggle to model this electorate.
That being said, referring to the same aggregator for the rest of this cycle will give us insight into trends, which should prove just as informative as the toplines, if not more so.
Here’s what the data show as of Thursday morning:
I’ve added Florida to the chart, even though 538 doesn’t currently display a polling average for the state. While I don’t expect Florida to be seriously contested, two recent polls had Donald Trump up between 2 and 5 percentage points among likely voters. Maybe it’ll be closer there than it has been recently. Either way, we’ll track as long as polls show it within 5 points.
The bottom line is that as she heads into the Democratic National Convention, Harris has a small but real polling lead in the states she’ll need to win the Electoral College in November. She has just above a 2-point lead in the state most likely to decide the election, also known as the tipping-point state. (This assumes that she wins the one electoral vote in Omaha, Nebraska, and loses one in Maine, both of which happened to Joe Biden in 2020.)
While her polling is better than Biden’s, let’s not get too excited. We have the convention and Labor Day to contend with, and then we can start more seriously digging into the numbers.
I will say this, however: I don’t want to hear “Fight as if we’re 10 points down!” We were just down in the polls with Biden, and no one liked it. No one. In fact, some Democrats were downright depressed enough to check out of the election. So let’s not pretend that losing is motivating. It is not. You know what is motivating?
Winning.
So fight as if we’re up 1 to 2 points. That’s the likely reality of the rest of this election cycle. And watching all of you, I can guarantee we are all much happier fighting to protect a lead than handling the adversity of being behind.
One good way to help protect Harris’ lead is by donating to her campaign today.