Kamala Harris’ lead over Donald Trump in the polls is being “steadily cut,” according to a pollster.
According to a new ActiVote poll, conducted between August 25 and September 2, Harris leads Trump by 1.6 points, on 50.8 percent to his 49.2 percent, a lead within the poll’s margin of error of 3.1 percent.
Her lead is down from the 5-point lead she had over Trump in ActiVote’s last poll, conducted among 1,000 likely voters between August 15 and 23.
“Harris’ poll numbers improved steadily for about three-four weeks after Biden dropped out, followed by a period of two weeks where it hovered around a 5-point lead. In the past five days that 5-point lead has been steadily cut to just under 2 percent,” ActiVote pollster Victor Allis wrote.
Newsweek has contacted the Harris and Trump campaigns via email for comment.
Before Harris launched her campaign, Trump was leading President Joe Biden nationally and across the seven swing states. However, Harris’ candidacy appeared to breathe new life into the Democratic campaign, with polls showing she had overtaken Trump’s lead nationally and that she was leading across six of the seven swing states in the days and weeks after Biden ended his re-election campaign.
But polls show that Harris’ lead may now be declining. Pollster Nate Silver‘s forecast model showed Trump leading Harris in the Electoral College for the first time since the beginning of August on Friday. His model gave Trump a 52.4 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, which is about 5 points higher than Harris’s 47.3 percent.
“Although we wouldn’t advise worrying too much about the difference between a 52/48 race one way versus a 48/52 race the other way—it’s not a big difference—this wasn’t a good day for Kamala Harris in our model, as Donald Trump is the slight favorite for the first time since August 3,” Silver wrote in an update.
His model also shows that the Republicans have made a net gain of between 0.2 and 2.1 points in every swing state other than Georgia in the past week.
He added that his model had accounted for any inflation in the polls owing to an expected boost for Harris following the Democratic National Convention.
Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, disembark from their campaign bus in Savannah, Georgia, August 28, 2024, as they travel across Georgia for a two-day campaign bus tour. Harris’ lead in the polls is declining.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
But he said that Harris’ standing in the polls could start to rise again as the model becomes more confident that she’s out of the convention bounce period.
Meanwhile, six bookmakers put Trump ahead of Harris, including Sky Bet, Paddy Power, William Hill, 888sport, Betfair and Unibet, though the two presidential candidates were tied with Bet365 and Ladbrokes.
Swing state polls have also shown bad news for Harris. The most recent SurveyUSA and KSTP poll showed Harris’ lead had been halved from 10 to 5 points in Minnesota since the end of July.
FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker also shows that Harris’ lead in Michigan has been reduced from 3.3 points on August 21 to 2.4 points.
Recent polls have also shown Trump in the lead in Pennsylvania, including a survey by the Trafalgar Group, which showed the former president 2 points ahead, while a Wick poll and an Emerson College poll showed the two candidates tied among likely voters in the state.
“If she’s only tied in Pennsylvania now, during what should be one of her stronger polling periods, that implies being a slight underdog in November,” Silver wrote in his Silver Bulletin newsletter.
FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker shows Harris is 3.2 points ahead of her opponent nationally. Silver’s model puts Harris 3.5 points ahead of Trump nationally. Both show her lead has steadily increased since July.
