Kamala Harris’ Polling Compared to Joe Biden’s in 2020

Despite Vice President Kamala Harris’ surge in the polls against former President Donald Trump, the 2024 race remains significantly closer compared to how things stood in 2020 with then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.
President Biden dropped out of this year’s presidential race on July 21 following weeks of interparty fighting among Democrats on whether he should pass the torch to the next generation after his debate fiasco against Trump in late June in Atlanta. Biden also endorsed Harris the day he withdrew from the race.
Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee, has downplayed Harris’ poll numbers, saying that he’s “leading by a lot” and pointing to the 2016 election, when the data showed former Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton even further ahead. While Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, she lost in the Electoral College due to Trump pulling off a series of narrow victories in several critical swing states.
In 2020, the polls consistently showed Biden leading Trump. While Biden went on to handily win the popular vote, the election came down to just tens of thousands of votes in several critical battleground states. Analysts have pointed out that the polling data continued to underestimate Trump’s support in 2020, although it did accurately predict the election’s outcome.
“President Trump continues to build momentum every single day by campaigning, meeting voters, and engaging with media. Meanwhile, the more voters learn about Comrade Kamala and her radical policies, the more they realize she is weak, failed, and dangerously liberal,” Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek in a Saturday morning email.
Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign via email for comment on Saturday morning.
The vice president, meanwhile, has largely dismissed Trump’s criticism, describing it as the “same old tired playbook.” Her campaign has also urged supporters not to grow complacent, highlighting that it’s a close race.
The data currently shows a relatively tight race between Harris, the Democratic nominee, and Trump. Although Harris appears narrowly favored, her margins are not as strong as Biden’s in 2020.
Here’s a closer look at how the data compares.
The national polling average by ABC News’ polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight, which was last updated on Saturday, currently shows Harris ahead of Trump by 3.3 points. The vice president has the support of about 47.1 percent of voters compared to 43.8 percent who back the former president.
Biden’s lead over Trump in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average on the same date in 2020 was more than double Harris’ margin now. The Democrat was 7.1 points ahead of his Republican opponent, with about 50.2 percent of voters backing Biden and 43.1 percent supporting Trump.
Ultimately, the Democrat went on to win the national popular vote by 51.3 percent while the Republican’s share was 46.9 percent. The margin was 4.4 percent—or just north of 7 million votes.
Most analysts believe that the Electoral College victory will ultimately come down to just a handful of states, with Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin critical to the outcome. Biden narrowly won all of these states in 2020, but the margins were relatively close—especially in Georgia and Wisconsin. Trump previously had won all these states in the 2016 election against Clinton.
FiveThirtyEight’s average currently has Harris up by 0.4 percent in Georgia, 2.4 percent in Michigan, 1.3 percent in Pennsylvania and 3.5 percent in Wisconsin. Back in 2020, on the same date, Trump was leading in Georgia by 1.3 points in the average. However, Biden was ahead in the other three states, leading by 6.3 points in Michigan, 4.7 points in Pennsylvania and 5.3 points in Wisconsin.
Biden went on to win Georgia by 0.3 percent, Michigan by 2.8 percent, Pennsylvania by 1.2 percent and Wisconsin by 0.7 percent.
Analysts have offered multiple theories for why polls have underestimated Trump’s support in past elections. Some have suggested that voters did not admit to pollsters that they planned to vote for the Republican. Others have suggested that the polls were weighted badly, giving certain demographics too much influence.
Some Trump voters may also have been less likely to respond to surveys. An April 2021 report from the Pew Research Center explains part of why this could be the case.
“Achieving proper representation of Republicans is more difficult than it used to be. Survey participation has long been linked to individuals’ levels of education and social trust. Now that the GOP is doing better attracting voters with lower levels of education and, according to some analysts, doing better than in the past attracting low trust adults, Republican participation in surveys is waning, increasing reliance on weighting as a corrective,” the report said.
Many pollsters believe they’ve made significant improvements and corrections compared to 2016 and 2020. Regardless, the data currently shows a close race, with Harris only narrowly ahead.