Donald Trump was the first Republican candidate to hold the lead in the national polling aggregate by RealClearPolitics for an extended period of time since George W Bush in 2004. He held that advantage over President Joe Biden from September 2023 until July 2024, when the incumbent POTUS was pressured by his own party to drop out of the race.
Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party in late July. By early August, she took a narrow lead in the RCP aggregate, which peaked at 2.2 points in early October.
Some right-wing pundits and social media users were sceptical of Harris’s sudden rise in popularity. Her favourability rating went from being in the negative by over 10 points to in the positive by a few points overnight. Some of those sceptics attributed this to a Democrat response bias to polling, some to the unfairly glowing media coverage, and some outright suggested that the polls are manipulated to help the Democrats.
Thankfully, above their current national polling average, RealClearPolitics also notes where that average stood at this point into the race in 2020 and 2016. And that data showed that Donald Trump was heavily underpolled in early to mid-October in both of his election cycles, by 4.7 points at its highest in 2020 and by 4.6 points at its highest in 2016.
This gave hope to Trump supporters that their preferred candidate would surge in national polling once again, like he did the last two times he ran. And, lo and behold, President Trump did see that late spike, and took over the lead this Saturday, 27 October. His current lead is a very narrow 0.2 points, as of the time of writing this.
However, he was also underestimated by the RCP aggregate even on election day in the last two cycles, by 1.1 points in 2016, and by an even wider margin, 2.7 points in 2020. The same arguments Harris supporters are making online now about national polling having been ‘fixed’ or ‘overcorrected’ were made in 2020 as well, and the exact opposite turned out to be the case.
Some explain the phenomenon of Donald Trump gaining in the polls late into the election cycle as him being a ‘strong closer,’ someone who can really make an impact in the late stages of the campaign season. The more cynical observers, however, claim that pollsters simply have to stop intentionally underpolling him as the election day gets near, as their final polls will be measured up against the actual results.
‘President Trump was underestimated by the RCP aggregate even on election day in the last two cycles, by 1.1 points in 2016, and by an even wider margin, 2.7 points in 2020′
What supports the latter theory is that Atlas Intel, the polling firm that has been the most accurate nationally in the last two US election cycles in 2020 and 2022, has consistently shown President Trump up in the popular vote by 2–3 points since July when Vice President Harris entered the race. In the same time period, the polling industry in general has shown a big shift towards Harris, then back to Trump.
Donald Trump is also leading all seven swing states in their respective RCP averages. In other states, which have not been considered in contest up until now, he has also made up significant ground in polling, namely in Virginia and New Hampshire.
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