- A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump, 48% to 43%.
- The poll reflects an 8-point reversal in the presidential race since late June.
According to a new USA Today/Suffolk University poll, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is leading Republican candidate Donald Trump, 48% to 43%.
The poll’s results reflect an eight-point reversal in the presidential election since late June, when Trump held a nearly four-point lead over President Joe Biden.
The vice president’s narrow lead was driven by big shifts among several key demographic groups traditionally important to Democrats, including Hispanic and black voters and young people. The biggest shift was among those earning less than $20,000 a year, who went from a 3-point lead for Trump over Biden in June to a 23-point lead for Harris over Trump in August.
The poll of 1,000 likely voters, conducted Sunday through Wednesday by landline and cell phone, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. It targets likely voters as the election draws closer; previous polls have been conducted among registered voters.
Harris has managed this year to do something Biden never could: get a lead over Trump.
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Without the customary rounding of results, her lead would be closer to four points rather than five, or 47.6% to 43.3%.
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The success of “Brat Summer” and targeted appeal
The findings underscore the success of targeted appeals at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week.
“As Kamala Harris’ emoji ‘Brat Summer’ drew to a close, young people, people of color and lower-income families dramatically swung to the vice president,” said David Paleologos, director of the Center for Political Studies at Suffolk University. “The same demographics were highlighted and summed up by many speakers at the convention.”
The biggest changes since June are all outside the poll’s margin of error.
- Voters ages 18 to 34 favored Trump by 11 points and Harris by 13 points, 49% to 36%.
- Hispanics, a group the Republican campaign has cultivated, moved from 2 points in favor of Trump to 16 points in favor of Harris, 53% to 37%.
- Black voters, traditionally one of the strongest Democratic groups, rose from 47 points in support of Biden to 64 points in support of Harris (76% to 12%).
Harris currently leads low-income voters by 58% to 35% and has stressed her commitment to creating an “opportunity economy” that would make housing more affordable and stop food price gouging, but she has not released detailed policy plans.
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“I’m so happy to vote for a woman.”
Voters across the board say the election has changed dramatically. Harris is the first woman of color and the first person of South Asian descent to be nominated for president by a major party. At 59, she is a generation younger than former President Trump, 78, and Biden, 81.
“I think people are cautiously optimistic that Harris has a much better chance of winning than Biden would if he went head-to-head with Trump,” said Amy Hendricks, 46, of Fort Worth, an independent who normally votes Democratic but was among those polled. “I’m just so excited to be able to vote for a woman, that’s the truth.”
But Jason Stream, a 46-year-old dentist from suburban Cleveland who supports Trump, took issue with how Harris became the nominee.
“She’s never been on a campaign trail,” he said in a later interview. “She’s never won a primary vote,” which he called “the most undemocratic way to choose a candidate.”
Biden, under pressure from party officials and donors who worried he couldn’t win, dropped out of the reelection race just over a month ago, clearing the way for him to hand the nomination to Harris at unprecedented speed.
According to the USA Today/Suffolk poll, Biden has never received more than 37.5% of the popular vote this year, and last spring he was trailing Trump by just half a percentage point (essentially tied), but shortly after the Biden-Trump debates in early summer the lead had grown to nearly four points.
This is the first poll since independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump. Independent Cornel West is currently at 2% support. Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver are each at 1%.
When third-party voters were asked about their second choice, 32% said Harris, 24% said West and 15% said Trump.
