A new survey has revealed that more Americans predict Vice President Kamala Harris will win the presidency than those who say they would vote for her.
The survey by Quantus Polls, sponsored by Trending Politics, was conducted from August 26 to August 27 with more than 1,000 respondents who indicated that Harris’ lead over Trump is close, but the majority predict she will win.
According to the survey, 49 percent of voters said they will vote for Harris, while 47 percent said they would vote for Trump, leaving her with a small two-point lead within the margin of error for the poll.
Meanwhile, 52 percent of respondents believe Harris will be victorious, while 48 percent thought Trump would win. This means that 3 percent of respondents who wouldn’t vote for Harris still believe she’ll win.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaking on the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois on August 22. Harris is favored to win the election, in a recent survey the majority of respondents also predicted she will win.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Another poll by The Economist and YouGov found that 40 percent of registered voters expect Harris to win the election, while 34 percent believe Trump will.
Michael J. Hanmer, a professor at the University of Maryland and director for the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, told Newsweek that from a data perspective, it’s hard to know why so many people predict her victory, but noted that it’s reasonable for people to support a candidate even if they don’t have faith in their ability to win an election, especially as it’s decided on electoral college votes, rather than the popular vote.
However, Hanmer believes that some of the people who predict a Harris victory despite not voting for her may not be Trump supporters, but rather those voting for third-party candidates Jill Stein and Cornel West, who are running against Harris and Trump.
A key factor, Hanmer said, is how vocal Harris’ supporters are. Harris’ apparearences have had large and enthusiastic crowds: rallies in Milwaukee and Arizona reportedly drew crowds of up to 15,000 people, and her nomination acceptance speech at the DNC drew 29 million viewers, with the convention overal drawing higher ratings than the RNC on all four nights.
This could have the effect of making her support seem bigger than it ends up being at the ballot box — Hanmer believes it’s too early to accurately predict how things will play out.
Even closer to the election, general-public predictions don’t necessarily tend to be accurate — in a YouGov poll from October 30 to November 1, 2016, the majority of respondents predicted Hillary Clinton would win, either narrowly or in a landslide. While Clinton won the popular vote, Trump was able to secure the electoral college votes to win the presidency.
According to polling aggregator organization FiveThirtyEight’s analyses, Harris is currently favored to win the election over Trump in terms of the electoral college outcome.
The Economist has also predicted that Harris will win the electoral college, with 273 votes to Trump’s 265, and both have a one-in-two chance of winning the election.
Another prediction for who will win the presidency is set to come sometime after Labor Day from renowned historian Allan Lichtman, nicknamed ‘Nostradamus,’ famous for his election prediction model “The Keys to the White House.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump and Harris’ campaigns for comment via email.
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