New 2024 general election polling from ABC News, The Washington Post, and Ipsos finds a large lead of six percentage points for Democratic presidential pick Kamala Harris at the national level among likely voters. She had 51 percent of the support to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s 45 percent.
Harris’ lead dropped to just four percent among registered voters in general.
Though presidential elections are not decided nationally, instead operating on a state-by-state basis through the electoral college, national results can still provide somewhat of an indication of corresponding electoral college outcomes. In the 2020 presidential election that put Democratic contender Joe Biden in the White House, he ended up leading Trump nationally by more than four percent, improving on the lead in the national popular vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, when she fell short in the electoral college.
In general, the course of a wide range of polling of the 2024 election began shifting with Harris taking over for Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential pick. On average, she now leads Trump nationally, according to the elections data site FiveThirtyEight. Trump had been ahead on the same metric when Biden ultimately decided to withdraw from the election and endorse Harris, who very quickly assembled the kind of support from the party needed to head towards the nomination, with no serious, public challenge to her candidacy from Democrats.
Harris’ selection to be her running mate for November, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz, was also received relatively well, quickly getting party-wide support as he and Harris hit the campaign trail amid what was initially a lull in Trump’s own actual appearances before everyday Americans.
Meanwhile, Harris is also getting some promising results in key states, like leads in Arizona and North Carolina in new polling released by The New York Times and Siena College.
