Kamala Harris’s polling bump is not what it seems

Prior to President Joe Biden's exit from the presidential race, former President Donald Trump consistently led in polling across all swing states, but since Biden was replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris , Trump has lost a lot of ground.

A new poll from Marquette University that was released Wednesday found Harris leading Trump 53%-47% among likely voters in Wisconsin. The result was vast improvement for the Democratic candidate from the previous Marquette poll, which had Biden and Trump tied in the Badger State.

Other polls released this week tell a similar story. A national Economist-YouGov poll has Harris leading Trump by 4 points in a two-way race and 2 points when third-party candidates are included. An NPR-PBS-Marist poll gave Harris a 3-point lead against Trump, and the latest Morning Consult poll puts Harris up by 4 points.

The results of these polls are a far cry from Biden's poll numbers in the weeks and months prior to his exit from the race. But Harris's position is hardly as rosy as the polling numbers indicate.

To begin with, Trump has always outpaced his poll numbers. In 2016 he won Wisconsin by less than a point after trailing in the polls by an average of 6 points. In 2020, Biden won the state by roughly the same margin but had led in the polls by an average of 7 points.

In 2020, Biden led national polling by an average of 7 points but ended up beating Trump in the national popular vote by 4.5 points, a margin that barely carried the Electoral College by less than 50,000 votes.

But even setting aside the misses that have plagued the polling industry when Trump is on the ballot, the latest polls showing a bump for Harris have skewed samples that could be the source of the vice president's improvement over Biden.

The aforementioned Economist-YouGov poll sampled 7% more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents than Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. But even with such a skewed sample, Harris could only manage a national lead of four points. In the NPR-PBS-Marist poll, the partisan divide once again favored Democrats by 4 points but yielded a nearly identical 3-point lead for Harris. For reference, the partisan divide in the 2020 electorate was 1 point, according to CBS exit polls.

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It should also be noted that Harris's polling bump has come during what can only be described as a honeymoon phase of her campaign as she is benefitting from some goodwill due to Biden's withdrawal from the race. She will likely experience another bump shortly after the Democratic National Convention later this month. But even with all the positive attention her campaign has received, she can only muster a slim lead over Trump in polls with skewed sample sizes.

With Trump's track record of consistently outperforming his poll numbers, it does not bode well for Harris's chances of winning the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency in November.