Five takeaways from the latest flurry of Harris-Trump polls

A plethora of polling has emerged in the past couple of days, giving fresh insights into the race for the White House.

More than 20 swing-state polls entirely conducted after the Sep. 10 debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump are now in the public domain.

Harris was widely perceived to have got the better of Trump in that encounter, though the question of how much her win has shifted the race is much cloudier.

Almost none of the latest polls was conducted recently enough to encompass reaction to the second apparent attempt on Trump’s life, which took place on Sunday at his West Palm Beach golf club.

Here are the main takeaways from the latest polls.

It’s better to be Harris than Trump — slightly

Overall, Team Harris is likely to be happier about the latest polls than Team Trump.

Nationally, Harris got some results that suggest she has slightly increased her lead over the former President. A Morning Consult poll put her up by six points — her largest advantage to date in surveys from that organization — while surveys from ABC News/Ipsos and Yahoo News/YouGov put Harris ahead by four points and five points respectively.

There were some eye-popping results for Harris in swing states too, though they were the exception rather than the rule.

The vice president’s campaign team will be happy about any reputable poll putting her up by five points in Pennsylvania, as a Quinnipiac University poll did; or by the same margin in Michigan, as a Marist College poll of likely voters did.

In the forecast maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), Harris is now given a 55 percent chance of prevailing in November.

It’s important not to exaggerate the meaning of such a number, which points to an extremely right race. But whatever momentum there is seems to be favoring Harris.

Trump has plenty of reasons for hope

Trump and his supporters need not be too disconsolate about the findings from the latest polls.

While overall there has been the appearance of a small trend toward Harris, it’s nowhere close to definitive. The debate, though it may have helped the vice president by a point or two, hasn’t come close to transforming the race.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released Thursday found the race to be tied nationwide among likely voters, with Trump up one point among all registered voters. A Fox News poll indicated Harris holds a narrow two-point lead in both categories.

Team Trump can also take encouragement from several swing-state polls themselves, including a series from The Hill and Emerson College.

The Emerson polls have Trump up by one point in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, suggesting the former president could again demolish chunks of the Democrats’ “Blue Wall.” The Emerson polls also have Trump up by three points in Georgia and by one point in Arizona, both states that President Biden carried in 2020.

Meanwhile, a Marist poll in Pennsylvania has the race there exactly tied — quite a contrast from surveys from Quinnipiac University and the New York Times/Siena College that have Harris up by five points and four points, respectively.

It’s tough to separate the signal from the noise

Pollsters and political scientists have a justifiable dislike of their surveys being cast as definitive down to the last decimal point.

Any survey on any subject has a margin of error and is susceptible to “noise” — numbers that shift because of the variables inherent in the polling process rather than because public opinion has actually changed.

The most recent spate of poll includes some eyebrow-raising results.

The New York Times/Siena College poll, for example, found Harris to be leading by four points in Pennsylvania while tied with Trump nationwide.

The finding sits incongruously with recent history. 

Biden won the 2020 national popular vote by more than four points but prevailed by just a little over one point in Pennsylvania. In 2016, Trump won Pennsylvania by roughly seven-tenths of a point while losing the national vote to Hillary Clinton by about two points.

There are other results that at least seem unusual. 

The most recent polls from Quinnipiac, for instance, give Harris a much narrower lead in Wisconsin (1 point) than in Michigan (5 points) or Pennsylvania (5 points) — despite The Hill/DDHQ polling averages showing Harris with a larger lead in the Badger State.

Again, such outcomes do not undercut the reliability of any pollster. They simply underscore that it’s an inexact science.

When all is said and done, it’s still a coin-flip

Every poll is going to be scrutinized closely with fewer than 50 days left in such a close and intense race.

But for all the reading of the polling tealeaves, the 2024 race is basically a coin-flip.

The Hill/DDHQ polling averages in the key states tell the story. Harris leads by about a point in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada, and by two points in Wisconsin. In the other three battlegrounds, the margins are fractions of a point.

There are numerous factors that could change that picture, including the millions of dollars each campaign is spending on TV advertising, Trump’s propensity to outperform his polls, or the capacity of a female Democratic nominee to benefit from a surge of support in the first presidential election since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

The polls keep telling us the best issues for either side

Some contours of this year’s race have remained fairly consistent — at least since Harris supplanted Biden as the Democratic nominee.

The abortion question is pretty clearly the strongest electoral card in the Democrats’ hands.

The New York Times/Siena College Poll, for example, showed Harris with a 13-point advantage among likely voters in terms of which candidate was trusted more on abortion.

Immigration is, electorally speaking, the mirror image of abortion — a big and emotive topic that plainly helps Republicans. Trump held a 12-point advantage on the topic in the Times poll.

Perhaps crucially, Trump was 13 points clear in the Times poll on the economy. That’s roughly in line with other surveys that give the former president the advantage on the topic that often ranks highest among voters’ concerns.