Vice President Kamala Harris earned Democrats their highest lead over former President Donald Trump in nearly a year, according to a poll from Morning Consult.
The pollster released its latest survey on the 2024 election on Monday, which found Harris leading Trump 48 percent to 44 percent among registered voters across the country. Morning Consult said the poll was conducted between August 2 and 4 and is based on the responses of 11,265 voters.
Morning Consult said that Harris’ 4-point lead is a “record-high margin in her favor” and is the “largest advantage for a Democratic presidential candidate over Trump in nearly a year,” according to the pollster’s election tracking.
On August 16, 2023, President Joe Biden was found to be ahead of Trump by 5 points among national voters surveyed by Morning Consult. The day before Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, the pollster found him to be 6 points behind the former president (47 percent to 41 percent).
Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, also leads Trump by 5 points among independent voters (42 percent to 37 percent) in Monday’s poll and was beating the former president by 9 points among young voters between the ages of 18 and 34 (49 percent to 40 percent). The survey has a margin of error of 1 percentage point.
The vice president was also found to have a higher favorability rating than Trump, with 48 percent of voters saying they have a favorable view of Harris, compared to 47 percent who have an unfavorable view. Trump’s favorability rating was in the negatives—46 percent of voters said that had a favorable view of the former president, while 52 percent who view him unfavorably.
Newsweek reached out to Harris and Trump’s campaigns via email for comment Monday evening.
In just two weeks since launching her presidential bid, Harris had taken the momentum in the 2024 race. At the end of last week, the vice president was leading in eight national polls. Trump’s campaign previously warned its team of a “Harris honeymoon” period in the weeks following the vice president’s campaign launch.
Aggregate polling from The New York Times has Trump still beating Harris by 1 percentage point (48 percent to 47 percent), although the gap between the two candidates has narrowed in recent days. When independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is included in the survey, the Times found that Harris and Trump are tied at 44 percent.
RealClearPolitics also has Trump beating Harris by 0.8 percentage points on average across national polling. On the day that Biden withdrew from the presidential race, Trump was beating the president by just over 3 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average.
Harris has also made gains in several pivotal battleground states. Polling averages from the 2024 Silver Bulletin found that the vice president was ahead in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan as of Friday. Polling averages from the Times found Harris and Trump tied in Wisconsin and Michigan, although the vice president was trailing by 2 percentage points in Pennsylvania as of Monday.
