According to a new poll, Kamala Harris has an eight percentage point lead over Donald Trump.
The poll, conducted by Marquette Law School between July 24 and August 1, shows Harris leading among likely voters with 50 percent when third-party candidates are included, versus 42 percent for Trump. Harris has improved the Democrats’ position since May, when Trump was at 44 percent, ahead of Joe Biden’s 41 percent.
Harris is also ahead among registered voters with 47 percent, Trump with 41 percent. In the last Marquette Law School poll in May, Trump was three percentage points ahead of Biden among registered voters, securing 40 percent of the vote, while the president received 37 percent.
But Harris is not only ahead when third-party candidates are included. She is also ahead of her opponent in a head-to-head comparison, with 52 percent of registered voters supporting her as the candidate for president, while 48 percent support Trump.
Among likely voters, Harris received 53 percent and Trump 47 percent. The results include voters who initially had neither Harris nor Trump on their minds but were then asked who they would vote for if given the choice.
Carlos Osorio/AP
Their lead represents a significant improvement for Democrats in a head-to-head comparison after a May Marquette Law School poll showed Biden and Trump tied among registered voters, with Trump favored by 51 percent of likely voters and Biden by 49 percent.
The poll was conducted with 879 registered voters and 683 likely voters. The margin of error was +/- four percent.
Newsweek has emailed Harris and Trump’s campaign teams for comment.
Since Harris began her campaign in July, the polls have looked positive for her. All national poll aggregators show her now in the lead, including pollster Nate Silver’s model, which aggregates the results of national polls and weights them by their reliability.
According to the model, Harris is ahead of Trump with 45.7 percent, whose share is 43.8 percent.
Silver’s model had indicated that Trump was ahead of the Democratic nominee in the polls for most of July, including in the weeks after Biden withdrew from the race. Harris first moved ahead of Trump on July 31, according to data released Sunday.
But despite Harris’ lead, the race is still close, Silver said. He estimated that Harris has a 50.5 percent chance of winning the Electoral College in November and a 66 percent chance of winning a majority of the vote.
Last week, Silver’s model gave Trump a 54.9 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, compared to a 73 percent chance of winning the election against Biden.
In the race for the White House, Harris also wins the Electoral College, where she is ahead of Trump by 275 votes to 262. Last week, the result was reversed: the aggregator showed 256 votes for the Democratic candidate and 275 for the Republicans.
Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio predicted a “short-term” boost in the polls for Harris in the coming weeks, as her entry into the race was expected to give Democrats new momentum. In a memo released in July, he referred to the expected boost as a “Harris honeymoon.”
