After this week’s debates, Kamala Harris has re-established a decisive polling lead over Donald Trump, with a clear majority of voters believing she will win, according to a variety of surveys.
The Guardian’s latest poll trend tracker shows that the vice president has regained a narrow lead over his Republican opponent since Tuesday’s showdown in Philadelphia, a change from a survey earlier this week which showed the two essentially tied.
The move is backed up by independent polls, some of which show Ms Harris with a bigger lead than the 0.9 percentage point margin indicated by The Guardian’s tracker.
The first Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted since the debate showed Harris leading by five points, 47% to 42%, up one point from her lead in the week after last month’s Democratic National Convention.
A separate Morning Consult poll released Thursday showed a similar lead for Harris, 50% to 45%, improving on the 3-4 point lead she had recorded before the debate. Clearly, the poll reflects a decline in support for Trump and may support the argument made by some pollsters that Trump’s shaky performance in Tuesday’s debate, watched by 67.1 million viewers, has damaged his credibility.
Two other polls, from YouGov and Leisure, give Harris leads by 4 and 3 points, respectively. Post-debate polls have generally been more positive for the vice president’s prospects than pre-debate surveys, which showed the surge in popularity Harris experienced after replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee stalling, with Trump trailing closer in national polls and holding a slight lead in the New York Times/Siena poll.
