Kamala Harris grows her lead over Trump in wake of convention — but polling guru says it isn’t all bad news for Trump

New polling showed Vice President Kamala Harris with a widening margin over former President Donald Trump in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Thursday.

It found Harris leads Trump 45% to 41%. Among registered voters, the 4 percentage-point lead was more significant than the 1-point lead Harris had over Trump in the outfit’s last poll in July. The poll had a 2% margin of error.

Over in polling guru Nate Sliver’s latest models, Harris didn’t fare as well.

“Although we wouldn’t advise worrying too much about the difference between a 52/48 race one way versus a 48/52 race the other way — it’s not a big difference — this wasn’t a good day for Kamala Harris in our model, as Donald Trump is the slight favorite for the first time since August 3,” Silver wrote in the Silver Bulletin. “There’s one big reason for that — Pennsylvania, which is the tipping-point state more than one-third of the time and where it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen a poll showing Harris leading.”

Silver’s model accounts for Harris’ convention bounce. 

“The model is also applying a convention bounce adjustment to Harris’s recent numbers, who has made gains in national polls, and you could argue about whether that’s the right assumption,” he wrote. “But the bottom line is that the model has the Electoral College/popular vote gap opening up again, a concern for Harris all along. There’s now a 17 percent chance she wins the popular vote but not the Electoral College, the model estimates.”

The polling changes reflect an election contest that has been roiled by an assassination attempt against Trump and President Biden’s decision to drop out and endorse Harris.