Exclusive: Harris leads Trump 44% to 42% in US presidential race, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

The only certain thing is nobody knows who will be elected until after the polls close and counting is certified.
VOTE. Everyone vote as if yours is the only one that matters, because it may be.
- 100% agree. Polls also don't really account for voter suppression tactics, or gerrymandering and other GOP fuckery, so absolutely vote because our democracy is literally at stake here.
  Our future generations will be impacted by the outcome of this specific election.
- I tend to wonder how these polls are conducted and who is answering them? Does anyone get polls via email or text? Are they still just calling people? I’m in my 40s and basically no one I know my age or younger answers numbers they don’t know anymore, and texts are ignored or flat out blocked because if you respond, they barrage you later, or at least that’s what we all assume.
  So I’m not convinced polls have any bearing on what will happen anymore. VOTE!
  
  Yes
  Different polls with different methods.
  Many call people, some online polls (using advertising with demographic targeting), some emails to various news list subscribers, some in person polling, etc. It's definitely harder these days to get accurate numbers because fewer responders means self imposed selection bias by those answering, which can correlate to the answers you get in unpredictable ways.
- To be fair, your vote statistically doesn’t matter in some states. I’ll make a bet with somebody that if I don’t vote in my state it won’t change anything.
  Dems really phoned this one in.
  
  There's plenty of downticket races that potentially directly affect your life more that matter.
  
  I don’t vote in my state it won’t change anything
  Wrong, wrong and wrong.
  Your vote matters down-ballot. Your vote matters for a mandate. Your vote matters because you will pay attention. The trick is to get people to feel the way you do so they can rule you.
  
  Federal, maybe, but it’s still important to vote for down ticket races, and your presidential vote can at least be a statistic toward the popular vote count. I get what you mean though, I’m from a consistently blue state.

That is an uncomfortably close margin but it's good to see she's leading now at least.
- It's only been like one day.
  
  Yeah, and it's great to see Trump's standing reversed in that one day!
  
  Better 2-pts up with Harris than 3-pts down with Biden. I like the direction those polls are swinging, even if I wouldn't put money on an outcome.
  
  it's honestly blowing my mind.
- Bruh, momentum.
  
  Wait until the convention - momentum and thunder.
- Other polls I had seen just yesterday (likely collected before Biden dropping out was a reality) still had Trump with a 1% or more lead over Harris, so they're really all over the place and I wouldn't trust them for much, even up to and including election day. I'm not breathing a sigh of relief until victory is declared, and even then, I wouldn't be so sure.
  
  Agreed, but I will say that I feel at least a bit less panicked.
- This is a swing and she's only beginning to build momentum. Let's hope things keep moving in the right direction.
- According to the article it's within the margin of error, so Trump may have more votes.

- Polls are garbage.
  The mainstream professional polls have been reliable for some time. They typically get within 2-3pt margin of error when taken a few days before the election, and they serve as a useful bellweather to track public sentiment. In this case, it appears jettisoning Biden is bringing voters back to the Dem fold. That's what Dems were banking on, and I'd consider it a good thing given how much I don't want Trump to be President.
  Vote like they don’t exist.
  People who obsessively follow polling are the ones most likely to vote.
  
  Stepping aside may honestly be the single greatest show of leadership Biden has done in his lifetime. If the polls are swinging, it's as much due to him making such a historical and respectable move as it is people surprised and refreshed by Kamala Harris.
- Vote like idiot rule the world, and try to make their day worse.
- Polls were historically accurate in 2022 and generally do a good job of measuring the temperature. Still, vote like they don't exist.
  
  Exactly. If polls didn't matter, Biden would still be running for president. With that being said: vote.
- If I ever get into politics I'm running on abolishing vote intention polls.
  
  How do you do that without violating the first amendment?

Harris, whose campaign says she has secured the Democratic nomination, led Trump 44% to 42% in the national poll, a difference within the 3-percentage-point margin of error.
National polls go beyond meaninglessness and into actual harm. The national popular vote does not elect the president, as we all should know too well. My vote in Illinois is worth far less than someone's vote in Wyoming. Your vote in California is worth far less than someone's vote in Alaska.
Unless a national poll weights responses based on state, and based on the electoral college results from states, it is completely misleading.
- And my vote in Oklahoma.....oh fuck it who are we kidding lol. Meaningless. I still do it though.
  
  In a similar situation. Theres a zero percent chance trump doesn't win my state by at least 10 points. Still gonna vote though.
  
  Just saw Oklahoma has one of the lowest voter turn outs in the nation. With Tulsa and Oklahoma city it's more progressive than most people realize. We've just got to get out and vote and convince those around us to do the same. I know we have the numbers to win local elections.
  
  Lots of downticket races can be swung by a popular presidential nominee.
  That said, Oklahoma's awash in O&G money and its state bureaucrats are notoriously corrupt. At some point, the sheer volume of gerrymandering, vote caging, and criminal disenfranchisement needs to be addressed. Simply shouting at people to "GO VOTE!" when they're getting handed broken machines and defective butterfly ballots and threatening robocalls isn't helping anyone, least of all the candidates they're hoping will win.
  
  Nah, not meaningless. Any swing away from the degenerates will dispirit them.
  
  Good for you. It may not mean anything for national elections but it could make a difference in a local one
  
  This sub hates the following message. That's why it comes today instead of yesterday.
  Focus on loyalty to ideology, not party affiliation. Left ideology has been most consistently expressed by the Green Party platform (Sanders watered it down, twice). They've lots of problems. But, they're incredibly loyal to the platform.
  If the Green Party gets 5% of the general election vote then they'll be on every ballot in '28. The Democrats can't silence the platform choice in primaries as they did twice to Sanders. This would place an incredible amount of pressure on Democrats immediately and be passively sustained for four years.
  In a purple state I'd vote Democrat POTUS for harm reduction. In a blue state it'd depend on the nuance of the situation. But, in a red state, I risk absolutely nothing by not for voting harm reduction.
  We're the only ones completely free to act for the long term. The blue wave thinks we're too stupid to understand nuance. Political parties don't deserve your loyalty. We need be loyal to each other, especially when we're hated for our choices.

I know the top comments in these subs is always something along the lines of “fuck the polls! Go vote!” I agree but damn it is nice to get some positive news now and then!
- Right? Enjoy something positive for a few seconds!
  
  I agree, and also, go vote!
- Definitely don't look at polls from the swing states then.

As with all the discussions on national polls, it's necessary to point out that national polls have no meaning. We don't have national elections.
Blue states are gonna blue state and red states are gonna red state, so the President will be decided by a handfull of states that don't reliably vote one way or another, and frankly, we just don't have enough good data on a Harris nomination to say one way or another.
Looking at the notable states I've looked at before, this data is from before Biden dropped out.
Arizona - Trump +6 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/arizona/
Nevada - Trump +10 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/nevada/
New Mexico - No data for Harris.
Georgia - Trump +5 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/georgia/
North Carolina - Trump +4 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/north-carolina/
Pennsylvania - Trump +4 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/pennsylvania/
Michigan - Trump +5 vs Harris
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/michigan/
Wisconsin - Tied.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/wisconsin/
Minnesota - No data for Harris.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/minnesota/
Harris also puts Virginia in play now as well, in what was assumed to be a blue state, now Trump +4.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/virginia/
So this is her starting point. She has 105 days to turn this around. The Democratic convention in August is key.
As of right now though? Here's the map:
- Those polls don't account for anything that happened after the switch, like the impact of the record number of donations and news blitz. Need to wait for the next round before we really have any idea, and a few more in a few weeks to see where it levels off
  
  Yup, like I say, this is the bottom.
- So ESPN favors trump is what you are saying. That site is owned by them. Always look at the bias.
  
  They're aggregating polls with a public methodology. Just because an organization exists doesn't mean it is pushing a bias in everything it does. If you're going to claim a bias point it out, say what they are doing to bias the results, you can't infer it from results.
  
  Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if all or almost all major news outlets have some bias towards Trump from up top since they all are the basically the same people.

i'm going to need so much popcorn to watch GOP squirming and flailing desperate to find something to attack LOL
~~she's too OLD!!!~~
~~hunter's laptop!!!~~
~~buttery males!!!~~
LOL
eat shit, republicans
- "She LAUGHS!"
  
  "she hates dogs!!!"
  LOL j/k. that's trump. trump hates dogs
- From a Politico article, we can see how the Russians are starting to talk about Harris. The Republicans aren't usually far behind...
  “Kamala with the nuclear button is worse than a monkey with a grenade,” Andrei Sidorov, the dean of the global politics department at Moscow State University (a once highly respected institution) said Sunday evening on state television’s prime weekly talk show.
  Edit: and then there's this: Unhinged Republican candidate calls Kamala Harris a “little wh*re” as GOP descends into misogyny
  
  Anything happens:
  Russians: NUCLEAR WAR OOGY BOOGY
  
  That's racist. Yeah, that's exactly the sort of rhetoric Repubs like to pick up.
  
  little wh*re
  LOL
  so she's....melania?
- What about white females?
  - Republican Congressman Tim Burchett
  
  Congressman Burchett with a belated Hillary Clinton endorsement.
- Coconuts!
  
  She cares about accessibility
- It's been a delight watching them flail uselessly. They knew they might have Harris as an opponent from the instant someone as old as Biden selected her for VP. They've had all this time to do oppo research and focus group what is likely to stick.
  All their arguments against Biden evaporated into nothingness the instant he bowed out and they are completely unprepared to run against Harris.
  They counted on Biden being a stubborn idiot and staying in the race and didn't have a backup plan.

Let it be a runaway snowball of a lead

This is good. Early, sure, but its numbers going in the right direction.

That's good news but still too close. We all need to continue informing the public that Donald is a dementia-ridden geriatric physically and mentally unfit for the office.
- Her polls before Biden did the right thing were lower. She has upward momentum. Biden had downward momentum.

Popularity or percentage of electoral college votes?
Only one of the two matter.
- Popularity I'm afraid.
  Other polls that factor in additional considerations essentially have them neck-and-neck right now, maybe a 1 or 2% lead for Trump.
  Fucking electoral college...
  
  The HoR needs more members, that would solve it without touching the EC.
- Yeah I want to know specifically about say Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, etc. I know Harris will win all along the coasts. But that's only 175 of 270.
- Yeah this is always the thing people forget... popular vote doesn't mean much unfortunately we have this antiquated electoral college thing.

1.) POLLS ARE GARBAGE.
2.) Corporate news cannot run a horse race without polls
3.) See #1

Project 2025 mentions Trump's name 300 times. Officials from his administration were involved in writing it. It's a plan to replace public servants with "Trump loyalist" - which Trump calls "destroying the deep state" but is actually know as "Unitary Executive Theory", aka a dictatorship.
In 2018, The Heritage Foundation said on their website, that two-thirds of the previous "Mandate for Leadership" they wrote for Trump had been passed into law. They're a big part of how the GOP sets policy when in office, dating back to the Reagan era.

Polls mean nothing, the trends on polls aren’t guaranteed if people get complacent and don’t turn out. Voter apathy is the worst thing that can happen to Dems in this election
- Well I hope they learned from 2016. I think they did..

How’s that convention bump coming along, Donnie?

Let’s get this number to double dights!

That's within the margin of error. That's not leading.

Oh cool a national poll, I’m sure this’ll be super relevant to a race decided on the state level.

Biden's our best bet, they said.
Everyone else polls worse, they said.
They were and remain full of shit.
- I said Biden was our best bet and am happy to be proven wrong.
- Most of us have told you tons of fucking times that we didn’t care who they ran, we were voting AGAINST Trump, not FOR Biden.
  And now that you have the opportunity to vote for someone who can actually beat Trump, you're angry.
  Why do always make shit up?
  If you haven't noticed people on lemmy who were insisting that it had to be Biden because no one else could exceed his polling, you haven't been on lemmy for a while.
  Only, we’re not not voting. So…. I guess you don’t really get your way. Do you?
  Check my comment history. I'm overjoyed that we have a better candidate now. Seems like the party is with me.
  Of course, you're not. Try to avoid the urge to write in Bidenyahu.
- Who cares.
- This. You can't forget what their plan was. They changed course somewhat, but Kamala is the never-Trump candidate. I expect her to do better than Biden, but they are still full of shit.