Kamala Harris Holds Record Lead Over Donald Trump in New Poll

Vice President Kamala Harris has reached a record-breaking lead over former President Donald Trump in a newly released poll.
The poll, conducted by Morning Consult between October 4 and 6, shows that Harris leads Trump by 6 points, 51 percent to his 45 percent. The poll surveyed 11,353 likely U.S. voters, with a margin of error of +/-1 percentage point.
Newsweek reached out to the Harris and Trump campaigns for comment via email.
It is not the first time Harris has led Trump by 6 points, with the vice president first carving out a record 6-point lead in a September 23 poll conducted after the debate between the two candidates on September 10
Harris had previously been leading Trump by between 2 and 5 points between the beginning of August and the end of September, according to Morning Consult. In July, after President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris, Morning Consult polls showed Harris leading Trump by between 1 and 2 points. Meanwhile, before Biden stepped down, Morning Consult polls from July had shown Trump leading Biden by up to 4 points.
Despite the improvement in Harris’ standing, the poll also shows that net buzz for the vice president—the share of voters who heard something positive minus the share who heard something negative—fell below double digits for the first time since she became the Democratic presidential nominee. However, her net buzz rating still exceeds Trump’s and Biden’s by double digits.
Nonetheless, the latest findings suggest the Harris campaign is still gaining traction in the polls with a month until the election.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker, Kamala Harris holds a 2.6-point national lead over Donald Trump. In pollster Nate Silver’s tracker, she is 3 points ahead.
Other individual polls have also put Harris ahead. For example, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, conducted between September 29 and October 6, shows that Harris is ahead of Trump by 3 points among likely voters, 47 percent to his 44 percent. The poll surveyed 3,385 likely voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 points.
However, the election will ultimately depend on what happens in the seven swing states.
Both FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver’s tracker show that Harris leads by 1 to 2 points in battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Trump maintains slight advantages in North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia.
Harris needs 44 electoral votes from toss-up states to secure victory, while Trump would require 51. If Harris wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nebraska’s 2nd District, she would reach the electoral threshold needed for a win.
FiveThirtyEight’s forecast predicts Harris winning in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, putting her in position to claim the presidency. The polling aggregator predicts she will win 279 electoral votes overall.
However, the close margins in these key battleground states indicate the race remains highly competitive, making it anybody’s to win. FiveThirtyEight recently noted that these narrow leads could result in the closest presidential contest in nearly 150 years.
Despite Harris’ lead, experts urge caution regarding poll reliability, as recent elections have shown polling inaccuracies.
In 2020, the American Association for Public Opinion Research labeled the polling miss as the largest in 40 years, with polls overestimating Biden’s advantage in the final weeks. Similarly, in 2016, FiveThirtyEight gave Hillary Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning, but she ultimately lost the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote.
However, while polls have historically underestimated Trump’s levels of support, experts believe that the polls will not be as inaccurate this year because they have gotten better at capturing likely Trump supporters who were undercounted in the past. Thus, Harris’ lead in the polls could accurately reflect voters across the country.
“Many pollsters today are using past vote [history] to correct for the Trump undercount,” Cliff Young, the president of Ipsos polling, previously told Newsweek.