Kamala Harris’ Lead Shrinking One Week from Election: New National Poll

Vice President Kamala Harris has lost some of her lead among national voters, according to the latest polling from the Florida Atlantic University Political Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab (PolCom Lab).
With a week left until Election Day, Harris is locked in a dead heat with former President Donald Trump in the battle for the White House. Several recent polls, however, have hinted that Republicans may have some momentum in the home stretch, with Trump gaining on Harris’ polling average across national polls.
In a survey released Tuesday by PolCom Lab, Harris was still leading Trump 49 percent to 47 percent among the 937 registered voters included in the poll. The survey was conducted between October 20 and 27 and has a margin of error of 3.2 points, meaning the margin between the candidates is too close to call.
Newsweek reached out to Harris’ campaign via email for comment on Tuesday.
Harris’ current lead is a dip from PolCom Lab’s national survey results in September, which found the vice president leading 49 to 45 percent among registered voters, outside the poll’s margin of error of 3.4 points. In August, Harris also led Trump nationally by 4 points (47 percent to 43 percent) among registered voters in the same PolCom Lab, which had a margin of error of 3.2 points.
The latest from PolCom Lab follows other polling trends. Trump also received positive news from the aggregator RealClearPolling this week, with the site finding for the first time since August that the former president is ahead of Harris on average across national polls. As of Tuesday, Trump leading Harris by 0.4 points on average.
By FiveThirtyEight’s tracking, Harris still leads Trump by 1.3 points on average across national polls. But that gap has slowly shrunk in recent weeks. At the start of October, Harris was up by 2.6 points on average. On September 1, the vice president was ahead by 3.1 points across national polling.
In such a close contest, the results of November are likely to hinge on a handful of critical battleground states where Harris and Trump are also locked in a dead heat.
Most analysts have touted Pennsylvania as the “must-win” state of the election, which President Joe Biden won in 2020 over Trump. Nearly all recent surveys in the Keystone State have fallen within the polls’ margins of error, meaning there is no clear lead for either candidate.
RealClearPolling’s election forecast model puts all seven swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—in the “toss-up” category, as well as Minnesota.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast, Trump has a slightly better chance of securing the necessary 270 electoral votes for victory in November, although the race is still too close to say for certain. FiveThirtyEight also predicts that Trump has at least a 60 percent chance of clinching Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, while the rest of this year’s swing states are in the “toss-up” category.