Buoyed by DNC, Harris Powers Past Trump in Nationwide Polls

With the Democratic National Convention in the rearview mirror and the election just over nine weeks away, polls are beginning to show Vice President Kamala Harris surging past former President Donald Trump. 

Polls released this week by Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab, the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight all show Harris with narrow but not insignificant leads over Trump.  Among the demographics where Harris shows the strongest support is women and younger voters.

Some Floridians who have never stepped foot in a voting booth are gearing up to do so in November, whether out of enthusiasm for the current vice president or fear of what the former president would do if he were back in the Oval Office.

Aaliyah Alvarez, a senior at Palm Beach State College, said that her biggest concern for the 2024 elections was Project 2025, a political initiative published by the conservative Heritage Foundation and former Trump insiders.

“The fine print is really scary,” said Alvarez, 21. “Now that I’ve gotten older, this stuff is going to affect me more.”  She said that on Nov. 5 she would vote for the first time, motivated by Project 2025’s call to target resources and rights for transgender people, as well as Trump’s backing of the 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed rights to abortion access.

Multiple polls show that the four-day DNC in Chicago Aug. 19-22 had the desired impact of charging up the Democratic base, following a period of mixed feelings and mediocre polling numbers for President Joe Biden’s bid for a second term in office. About 21.8 million viewers watched all four days of the convention, according to AdWeek, compared to about 19.1 million who watched the Republican National Convention in July.

Elijah Loo, 22, an FAU student, said that he’d also watched the RNC, which he called  “too unhinged for my liking.” Watching the DNC heavily influenced his decision to vote for Harris. 

“The policies discussed during the DNC were better for America as a whole," Loo said.

Another FAU student, criminal Justice major Alexander Guerrero, said most of his views align with the vice president’s and thus he’ll be voting for her in the general election. Still, he said, he hoped for a stronger statement on climate change, which is one of his top concerns.

“I agree with her stance on the environment, especially climate change, but I was watching the DNC the other night and she barely mentioned it which is kind of alarming,” said Guerrero, “but I’d rather her over Trump any day.” 

Many of the young voters interviewed by MediaLab reporters referred to Harris simply by her first name, evincing an informality and connectivity with the Democratic candidate that hardly existed in July, when Biden announced that he would not seek re-election, subsequently endorsing Harris.

“I personally plan on voting for Kamala because of her views on the economy and mostly because of her plans to help the middle and lower-class, much more than Trump’s. Overall her plan of freedom for the country is appealing to me,” said Matthew Peck, a UCF student majoring in data science. Peck said that if Harris is elected, it will help fight stigmatization of the Black community.

“I think the best attribute a candidate can have is just overall being a good person,” Peck added.

Others who are in the upper end of the “youth vote” said that if they were on the fence about Harris, that is less the case following the convention. Jordan DiCosola, a 29-year-old 3D design technician, said she was voting for Harris and believes it's her civic duty to vote.

“If you don't vote, don't complain," said DiCosola. “I have always voted, and for me, voting is that one right that no one can take away from you, that you get to change the future for yourself, for your friends, family, your peers.” A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Thursday showed Harris polling 24 percentage points better than Biden among voters between the ages of 18 and 34. The poll has Harris at 48% to Trump’s 43%.

Victoria Thomson, a junior at FAU, said she would stick with the Republican candidate despite some deep reservations, on which she declined to elaborate. “I’m voting for Trump even though I’m not the biggest Trump fan,” Thomson said. 

Although Harris taking the lead is certainly a turning point, many analysts and pollsters caution against jumping to conclusions about what will happen in November. This includes Dr. Kevin Wagner, who co-directs the Political Communication and Public Opinion (PolCom) Lab at FAU.

“Probably what you’re seeing here is what we call a convention bounce, which is when the enthusiasm for the candidate who just had a convention, their voters tend to respond to polls a little more frequently and with a little more enthusiasm,” explained Wagner, a professor of political science and associate dean at FAU. “So you can see a bounce, which is a push up in their numbers. Whether that is sustainable, we can’t really know at this point.”

– With reporting by Kate Albrecht, Zay Bostic, Rebecca Green and Morgann Rhule