For the first time in nearly a year, Americans expect the Democratic presidential nominee to beat former President Donald Trump in November.
According to the latest poll from The Economist/YouGov, 40 percent of U.S. adults who were surveyed between August 4 and 6 believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is the likely winner of the 2024 presidential race. Out of the 1,618 adults surveyed, 38 percent said they believed Trump would be victorious.
While a small margin, it is the first time since October 2023 that Americans have indicated in an Economist/YouGov poll that they think Trump will lose his reelection bid to either Harris or President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the race as the Democratic nominee on July 21. In the survey released last week, Trump was predicted to win over Harris 42 percent to 35 percent.
Harris’ boosted chances of winning the election may be due to the increased enthusiasm among Democrats since she entered the race. This week, 60 percent of Democratic voters said they were “very or extremely enthusiastic about voting” in November, while 58 Republicans said the same.
That number is a 2-point boost for Democrats compared to last week’s Economist/YouGov polling, where 58 percent said they were feeling enthusiastic. Meanwhile, Republican‘s excitement dropped by 9 points–the poll conducted between July 27 and 30 found that 67 percent of GOP voters were feeling “very or extremely enthusiastic” for this fall.
According to a report on Wednesday’s polling, this is the first time that Democrats have been more excited about the election than Republicans since the Economist/YouGov began asking the question in March 2024.
Newsweek reached out to Harris and Trump’s campaigns via email for comment.
Polling has shown that Harris and her recently-appointed running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have closed the gap to Trump in just a little over two weeks since entering the 2024 race. As of Monday, Harris was leading in all major polling averages, including those compiled by RealClearPolitics, The Economist, and FiveThirtyEight.
The race, however, is still incredibly close. In RealClearPolitics’ report, Harris was leading Trump by just 0.2 percent. The vice president’s biggest lead on average was calculated by FiveThirtyEight, which said that Harris is now 2 percentage points above Trump on average across national polling.
Harris told her supporters at a rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday that her campaign is “the underdog” in the race but that she was ready to fight until the election.
“We have a fight ahead of us, and we are the underdogs in the race,” she said at an event at Temple University, where she introduced Walz for the first time as her running mate. “But this is a people-powered campaign, and we have momentum.”
