In less than 46 days, Vice President Kamala Harris will go head-to-head with Donald Trump as Americans cast their votes in the 2024 election.

A new poll from The New York Times/Siena College shows the two candidates in a national deadlock; though Harris has improved her lead among young people and white, college-educated voters following the debate.

Separate swing state polls from Pennsylvania and Michigan show that Harris has etched out a strong 5+ point lead in both states, while a third battleground is too close to call.

The candidates are preparing for an intense final stretch of the campaign, with the needle ready to swing either way. So how will Harris and Trump fare in November?

Harris has a 2.9-point lead over Trump in the latest average of national polls, collated by FiveThirtyEight. On average, Harris has been marginally ahead of Trump in national polls.

However, a fresh poll from The New York Times and Siena College has Trump and Harris in a national deadlock, each at 47 percent of the vote among likely voters.

This is a slight shift from the same poll in early September, which had Trump at +2 points ahead of Harris in a surprise result.

The new poll, taken after the debate and with 2,437 likely voters, had 67 percent of respondents saying that Harris performed well in the debate, compared to 40 percent who thought the same about Trump.

Harris retains a strong lead among women (12 points ahead), while Trump enjoys a 14-point lead among men.

In particular, Harris has improved her vote share among under-34s following the debate, with a 7 percent increase to 58 percent of the vote and a 21-point lead over Trump.

Meanwhile, her lead within the 30-44 age bracket has shrunk, with Trump just 4 points behind; though Trump’s margin in the 45-64 age bracket has also decreased to just 2 points.

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Among white, college-educated voters, the early September poll showed a 12-point preference for Harris. Following the debate, this group has seen the most substantial jump, with a 25-point lead for Harris at 61 percent of the vote.

Interestingly, a pre-debate poll from The New York Times showed that nearly a third of voters (28 percent) felt they needed to learn more about Harris, compared to 9 percent who would say the same about Trump.

But the debate was helpful for Harris in that regard, as half of voters (50 percent) feel that that they “learned a lot” about her during the debate, with just a third saying the same about Trump, according toThe New York Times poll.

Battlegrounds

Separate polling from Quinnipiac University in three key battleground states shows a promising lead for Harris — but there’s still room for Trump to turn things around.

In Pennsylvania, which hosted last week’s head-to-head debate, Harris leads by 6 points, with 51 percent of the vote, compared to Trump’s 45 percent.

Harris also enjoys a strong 5-point lead in Michigan at 50 percent, with Trump at 45 percent.

Part of this could be attributed to Harris’s particularly strong support among Michigan women, which is higher than the national average.

“With a gender gap as wide as Lake Michigan, Harris leads Trump by about 20 percentage points among women and Trump leads Harris among men by half that,” says Quinnipiac University analyst Tim Malloy.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, neither candidate has managed to carve out a real lead. Since Biden won the state by a hairline in 2020 — just 0.63 per cent — we could see a repeat situation in November.

Favorability

The vice president has suffered overall negative favorability ratings since July 2021, which is not uncommon for those holding public office.

But on Sept. 18, for the first time in over three years, Harris’s positive and negative favorability ratings were equal, according to the average of all favorability polls collated by FiveThirtyEight.

The debate may have been Harris’s chance to turn around her public perception, and ultimately foster a more favorable opinion of herself and her campaign.

The same cannot be said of Trump, whose net favorability is at a -9.9 negative rating, and has been negative since the last election. JD Vance also entered the race with a negative rating, which has only grown with time, now at -10.7 percent on average.

Democratic running mate Walz is the only candidate who entered the race with a positive rating and has kept it, with an average favorability rating of +3.9 according to FiveThirtyEight.

However, incumbent President Joe Biden has also suffered negative ratings since September 2021; and has the lowest favorability on average, at -14.6 percent.

Trust in Trump or Harris?

On major issues, trust for Harris and Trump is split down the line.

An ABC News poll shows that Americans believe Trump will better handle the economy, inflation and immigration, while Harris is more trusted on healthcare, gun violence, and abortion, among other issues.

The economy remains the most important factor for many voters, with an Independent analysis showing that economic issues are pivotal for independent voters in many key states.

As we near the one-year mark of the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, Americans say they are more confident (+6 percent) in Trump’s ability to handle the Israel-Hamas war; though only half of Americans view the war as important to their vote.

CNN’s snap poll following the first Trump-Harris debate shows that Harris managed to turn the tide with some voters. 

In the wake of the debate, more voters now believe Harris better understands the issues of people like them (44 percent) compared to Trump (40 percent). Before the debate, the opposite was true.

Independents

A Morning Consult poll from earlier this month shows that  independent voters in Texas and Florida are leaning towards Harris, despite both states being Trump strongholds.

In a pivotal shift, Harris also leads Trump by +7.7 percent among independent voters, according to a new poll from Emerson College (up to September 4).

Capturing the independent vote will be crucial for either Harris or Trump to take the lead in this election. This is also the most likely group to vote for a third-party candidate, though with RFK Jr out of the race, this has dwindled to just 4 percent of independents.

The nationwide Emerson College poll has 49.5 percent of independents saying they would vote for Harris, compared to 41.8 percent for Trump.

This is a substantial jump from the same poll one month ago, which showed Harris just inching ahead of Trump (46 percent to 45 percent) among independent voters.

However, 5 percent of independent voters say they are still undecided, and the elusive voter group is difficult to pin down, with higher variation between polls and regions than other demographics. Nonetheless, Harris can be credited with mobilizing the non-partisan voter base, whose support is much stronger since Biden dropped out.

While Trump is taking home rural voters, at 63 per cent, Harris leads among both urban-resident (58 percent) and suburban voters (56 percent).

Suburban voters chose Trump over Hilary Clinton in 2016, while in 2020, Biden flipped the lead for Democrats.