Newsweek, October 2024
With less than four weeks until Election Day and early voting underway in some states, Vice President Kamala Harris’ polling lead is trailing that of President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton at the same point in 2020 and 2016 respectively. RealClearPolling’s average of polls shows Harris has a 1.8 point lead over former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, as of Friday. Biden was leading Trump by 10.3 points on October 11, 2020, according to RealClearPolling’s average. Clinton, the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2016, was ahead of Trump by six points on the same date in 2020.
Trump’s victory in 2016 came as a surprise to the nation’s pollsters, as most polls has shown Clinton ahead of Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, though her advantage narrowed in many surveys in the final weeks before the election. In 2016, Clinton garnered almost three million more votes than Trump, but he won the Electoral College and the presidency.