Kamala Harris Opens up Biggest Lead Over Trump in 538 Polling Aggregate

Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks onstage during the first day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 19, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. Harris has opened up her biggest polling lead yet over Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris has opened up her biggest polling lead yet over former President Donald Trump, according to a top polling tracker.

FiveThirtyEight's poll tracker, which complies the results of national and statewide polls and weights them according to reliability, shows that nationally Harris is on average ahead of Trump by 3.3 points, with 47 percent to the Republican's 43.7 percent.

It marks Harris' largest lead in the tracker just a month after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and made her the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

Since she became the candidate, the Democrat's position in the polls has steadily improved, with polls moving in her direction after previously showing Trump leading Biden.

Harris overtook Trump just days after her campaign was launched, and by July 24, she was leading the former President by 0.8 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight's poll tracker. Every national poll aggregator now shows she is in the lead nationally.

Polls have also shown that Harris has built enthusiasm among Democrats, with 71 percent saying they were either very or extremely enthusiastic about voting for her for president in the upcoming election in the latest poll by The Economist and YouGov, conducted between August 17 and August 20.

That is compared to the same poll from between July 13 and July 16, before Biden dropped out, which showed only 43 percent of Democrats were either very or extremely enthusiastic about voting for the incumbent for president in November.

Harris also drew more than 2.4 million donors in her first 11 days at the top of the Democratic ticket—nearly 200,000 more contributors than during the entirety of Biden's year-plus-long campaign, Bloomberg reported.

The boost in the national vote is notable, but winning the presidency might be more difficult for Harris as the Electoral College map is close. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, but have only won the White House five times.

Amid her momentum, well-known pollster Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight who left the poll tracker in 2023, is predicting on his Silver Bulletin forecast that the vice president has a 53 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, with 277 votes, compared to Trump's 47 percent chance, with 260 votes.

However, Silver's latest prediction shows that Harris' chances of winning in November have decreased while Trump's have increased, with his previous prediction from last week showing she had a 56 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, with 282 votes, compared to Trump's 44 percent chance, with 256 votes.

Back in July, Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio predicted that there would be a "short-term" bump in polls for Harris in the coming weeks as her entrance into the race was expected to re-energize Democrats, referring to the anticipated boost as a "Harris Honeymoon."

Since July 26, only four national polls have given Trump a lead over Harris, according to FiveThirtyEight. Four other national polls conducted since July 26 have shown the vice president and the Republican are neck-and-neck.

Poll aggregator VoteHub, which compiles national polls from the last 28 days and gives every poll equal weighting, shows Harris has a 2.3 percentage point lead over Trump.

Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.

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