Donald Trump’s long-standing and seemingly-insurmountable polling lead has vanished over the course of four weeks while the 2024 general election now looms specter-like just over two months away, with early voting set to begin in some states as soon as this September.
What a difference a month makes!
Donald Trump’s long-standing and seemingly-insurmountable polling lead has vanished over the course of four weeks while the 2024 general election now looms specter-like just over two months away, with early voting set to begin in some states as soon as this month.
A curious voter would have to go back more than a year to find the former president down in the polling averages by as much as it seems he currently is, and the best he could claim for himself at the moment is a statistical margin-of-error tie or a questionable back pat from known polling partisans.
The newest numbers are even worse for the 45th president on a case-by-case basis than they are on average. According to the most recently released national surveys, Trump could be trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by upwards of 5 points.
That’s a sharp reversal from the far-off and bygone days of literally just this past July, when Trump’s “Make America Great Again, Part II” was the summer blockbuster and led President Joe Biden’s floundering made-for-TV campaign sequel by an average of three and a half points.
A Suffolk University/USA Today poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken immediately after the Democratic National Convention and released late last week, showed that Harris has “engineered an 8-point turnaround in the race for president” and now leads Trump by five points, 48% – 43%.
“With the ‘Brat Summer’ of Kamala Harris memes and emojis winding down, young people, persons of color, and low-income households have swung dramatically toward the vice president. These same demographics were emphasized and woven together by numerous speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said with that survey’s release.
