With President Joe Biden having been out of the race for 10 days now, there's been an increase in polls showing the race between former and potentially future President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. The hope from Democrats was that Harris would poll better than Biden. Nevertheless, it looks to be a close and competitive election decided by key battleground states. Those polls are particularly ones to watch. They always have been, but it's been eye-opening to see where the race stands in these states now that it looks to be between Trump and Harris.
Morning Consult/Bloomberg has been putting out battleground polls for months, with varying results, though Trump tended to come up on top. On Tuesday, a new battleground poll was released, this one between Trump and Harris.
The numbers are suspect, at best. According to such a poll, Harris is up +2 in Arizona (49-47 percent); tied with Trump in Georgia (47 percent); up +11 in Michigan (53-42 percent); up +2 in Nevada (47-45 percent); and up +2 in Wisconsin (49-47 percent). Trump, meanwhile, is up +4 in Pennsylvania (50-46 percent) and only up +2 in North Carolina (48-46 percent).
Overall, Harris leads Trump by 48-47 percent in those swing states.
In each of the seven 2024 battlegrounds tested except Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris has a higher level of support than Joe Biden ever received — a finding most acute in Michigan, where our survey shows majority backing Harris. https://t.co/og5BIFzWb1 pic.twitter.com/sjkseaL7J0
— Morning Consult (@MorningConsult) July 31, 2024
Virtually all of these results seem like outliers. Trump has led, and by comfortable margins, in Arizona and Nevada, so it's doubtful that Harris is ahead, even by the margin of error. The same goes for a tie in Georgia.
It may be more believable that Trump is up +4 in Pennsylvania and Harris up +2 in Wisconsin, with Wisconsin especially looking to have a close race there. That being said, if Harris picks Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as her running mate, and her rally tour date schedules suggests that she will, that lead may disappear in Pennsylvania. At the very least, it'll likely get more narrow.
It is even more doubtful, though, that Trump is only up by +2 in North Carolina and that Harris would be up a whopping +11 in Michigan. Like Wisconsin, Michigan looks to have a close race. It's doubtful that whoever wins will do so by double digits.
If Harris is up by so much in Michigan, then why isn't she up more in Wisconsin, which is right next door? Why would Trump be up in Pennsylvania, then, by some of his largest margins, per this poll at least?
Hundreds of users, from all sides of the political aisle, chimed in to call out the poll for such unbelievable results.
Bonchie, at our sister site RedState, has written and posted about such a poll. This includes how Morning Consult is known for being an outlier.
"Then there's the fact that Morning Consult has been an outlier throughout this presidential cycle. For example, they had Biden winning a significant margin in both Pennsylvania and Michigan post-debate when every other pollster showed him crashing and burning. They also had the president only losing by one point in Georgia (Harris is tied according to the latest survey)," Bonchie wrote with original emphasis.
Alright, we've doomed. Now, I'll provide just a bit of cope on those Morning Consult polls.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) July 30, 2024
They have been outliers most of the cycle. Even *post-debate* they had Biden up by a good margin in MI and WI. They also only had Biden down one in GA (Harris is tied in the latest). pic.twitter.com/0nhhThNUxN
It's always worthwhile to look at the methodology, and the sample size for this poll is certainly something to behold. Some of them are truly pitiful. The polls were conducted July 24-28, with only 804 registered voters in Arizona, 799 in Georgia, 706 in Michigan, 454 in Nevada, 706 in North Carolina, 804 in Pennsylvania, and 700 in Wisconsin.
The margin of error across all seven states is plus or minus 1 percentage point, 3 percentage points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania; 4 percentage points in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and 5 percentage points in Nevada.
These poll numbers will likely be averaged into poll averages from sites like RealClearPolling and Decision Desk HQ/The Hill. The averages further highlight why these results are not quite believable.
Here's how various forecasters regard the battleground states:
- RCP: Trump is up +4.2 in Arizona, up +4.0 in Nevada, up by +0.2 in Wisconsin, up by +2.7 in Pennsylvania, up by +5.5 in North Carolina, and up by +3.6 in Georgia. Harris is only up by +2.0 in Michigan.
- Decision Desk HQ/The Hill as of July 27 (rounded to nearest whole): Trump is up +6 in Arizona, up by +5 in Georgia, +9 in Nevada, +2 in Michigan, +3 in Pennsylvania, +10 in North Carolina, and +1 in Wisconsin.
The Morning Consult analysis focuses on how these strong numbers for Harris look to be a result of Biden dropping out of the race. "Biden’s decision to clear the way for Harris’ ascent has put the Democratic Party on better footing against Trump, but the presumptive nominee’s advantages remain narrow with several weeks to go before voting begins," one bullet point reads.
A write-up for Bloomberg is full of even more excitement for Harris, starting with the headline of how "Kamala Harris Wipes Out Trump’s Swing-State Lead in Election Dead Heat."
In many ways, that write-up sounds like it could have been written with help from the Harris campaign:
Kamala Harris has wiped out Donald Trump’s lead across seven battleground states, as the vice president rides a wave of enthusiasm among young, Black and Hispanic voters, according to the latest Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll.
...
The numbers suggest Harris has a shot at reassembling the voter coalition that propelled President Barack Obama to the White House — and a clearer path to victory than Biden, who’d struggled to galvanize the Democratic base. Little more than a week since Harris became the presumptive nominee, the poll offers early hints that the party’s historic gambit in pushing an incumbent president off the ballot is having the effect that Democrats hoped it would.
The race remains a toss-up. Across the surveyed swing states overall — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the gap between the candidates is within the poll’s statistical margin of error. What’s more, Harris may currently be enjoying a “honeymoon phase” — in the words of Trump’s top pollster — and she faces a challenge to win trust on some issues vital to voters, notably her ability to manage the economy and immigration.
Still, the survey shows newfound enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket under the 59-year-old Harris. The switch-up in candidates looks set to boost the turnout in swing states, where there’s evidence that key constituencies for the party have been energized by her candidacy.
...
Harris’ appeal to Black and Hispanic voters will be a concern for the Trump campaign, which has long planned to court those groups — and especially younger men within them. It’s seen as a way for the GOP to broaden support beyond its traditional base and make up for a likely deficit among suburban women.
There are already signs that Biden’s withdrawal has upended this strategy. Trump, who specializes in put-downs, has struggled to define his new opponent without coming across as racist or sexist and alienating swing-state voters. The 78-year-old faces other challenges given his ongoing legal woes, as a convicted felon who was found liable of both sexual abuse and liable for defamation and ordered to pay $83 million. Harris has exploited that by leaning into her record as a prosecutor.
It would be at the Trump-Vance campaign and Republicans' peril to laugh these polls off completely, but the Democrats also shouldn't get too excited over such polls either.
