After another shocking week, latest Guardian 10-day polling averages survey shows vice-president ahead by 2.6 points
The US presidential election remains on a knife edge 45 days before voters go to the polls, despite Kamala Harris enjoying one of her most encouraging spells of opinion polling since becoming the Democrats’ nominee nearly two months ago.
During yet another momentous week that began with a suspected second assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the latest Guardian 10-day polling averages survey shows Harris increasing her lead to 2.6 points, 48.5% to 45.9%.
While still within error margins, that is an improvement of the 0.9% edge Harris held last week and a significant shift from the statistical dead heat of a fortnight ago before the candidates held their only scheduled televised debate in Philadelphia on 10 September.
Polling suggests voters, by large majorities, believe Harris won that encounter – when Trump, the Republican nominee and former president, effectively self-sabotaged by going on off-topic digressions about crowd sizes at his rallies and making universally debunked claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets.
A New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena nationwide poll on Thursday showed the candidates tied at 47% – actually a slight improvement for Harris on the same survey taken before the debate, when Trump recorded a one-point lead.
Other national polling has been more positive for Harris. A Morning Consult poll – based on more than 11,000 respondents – gave her a six-point advantage, 51% to 45%, the biggest she had established since replacing Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
There are other underlying trends giving Harris reasons to be cheerful, albeit cautiously.
One is her buoyant performance in battleground states, the key arenas in determining the result of the 5 November election under America’s electoral college system.
