Can Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump? Latest poll updates

Vice President Kamala Harris is making a bid for the White House with running mate Tim Walz after replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket just a few months before Election Day.

A new poll suggests that Harris leads in almost all battleground states.

So how will Harris actually fare against Donald Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, this November?

Harris now has a 2.7-point lead over Trump in the latest average of national polls, collated by FiveThirtyEight.

Republicans are attempting to downplay Harris’s growing lead as a honeymoon phase, but it’s clear that the Democratic candidate has maintained her momentum since entering the presidential race. On average, Harris has been marginally ahead of Trump in national polls, though the race remains tight.

In the seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the war is still being waged between Democrat and Republican campaigns.

Fresh research from the Cook Political Report show that Harris has a lead in six out of seven states, with Trump holding strong in Nevada.

The poll shows Harris’s strongest lead in Arizona, where Biden won by just 0.4 per cent in 2020.

This is a substantial swing from the same polls in May, with a Trump-Biden matchup, where Trump led in six states and tied in Wisconsin.

Yet polling in swing states continues to show variation from pollster to pollster, with a YouGov/CBS poll conducted up to the same date (August 2) suggesting that neither candidate had a significant lead in any of the battlegrounds.

Overall, battleground polls have consistently shown that Harris has picked up momentum from her predecessor’s trailing support, and is on-track to lead Trump in some