This article is a submission from thenewsletter by Kiko Llaneras, a newsletter for Morning Express subscribers:sign up here.
Although Donald Trump has been leading the polls for months, his lead widened after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate. The crisis that had opened up for the Democrats was evident in the polls: Trump gained a lead of three or four points.
Until then, Kamala Harris’s polls had been worse than Biden’s. But that began to change after June 27, the date of the controversial debate. The president’s numbers worsened and the vice president’s improved, as she stopped being a hypothetical candidate and became a real option. According to the polling average, The New York Timesover the past four weeks Harris has narrowed her gap with Trump from five points to one.
There are only a few polls in this average from this week, after Biden’s withdrawal and with Harris practically confirmed, but they are enough to draw a conclusion: the November elections are once again very open. The change from Biden to Harris has brought us back to the situation in April, with Trump ahead by a narrow margin.
This is also the opinion of the forecasters on the Metaculus platform. Two weeks ago, in the midst of the Democrats’ crisis and after the attack on Trump, they raised the Republican’s chances of winning the election to 75%. However, once Biden was removed from office, the forecasters lowered Trump’s chances to 55%, compared to 45% for Harris.
Metaculus’ forecast also coincides with prediction markets Polymarket and PredictIt, where Trump’s chances are at 55% and 60%, respectively.
And now that?
The first question for the coming weeks is to see how far Harris’ momentum will go in this little honeymoon she is experiencing. Three polls this week agree on seeing a recovery for her party.
According to Ipsos, the Democrats have gone from losing by two points (with Biden, two weeks ago) to winning by that difference (with Harris, now). The NYT/Siena and CNN polls keep Trump ahead, but have reduced his lead from six points to three and one. These are few polls, and they have wide margins of error, but they point to what we already saw, a closer presidential race.
The polls ahead are likely to be good for Harris. The candidate has all the spotlight and should benefit from the Democratic mobilization now that they are defusing their crisis. And they still have their convention to hold, in mid-August in Chicago. The key after that? To see if those gains are consolidated or diluted.
