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.

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

Harris now has a 2.5-point lead over Trump in the latest average of national polls, collated by FiveThirtyEight. A new poll suggests that the gender divide between male and female voters is growing, with more men leaning Republican.

On average, Harris has been marginally ahead of Trump in national polls, though the race remains tight.

A new CBS/YouGov poll (up to August 16) has Harris at a 3-point lead and shows a substantial gender divide is emerging between the two candidates, with more men supporting Trump and more women voting for Harris.

Trump’s key supporters remain male voters, the 45-64 age group, and white voters with no college education. But in the last group, Trump appears to have lost some of his leverage over Harris when compared to Biden.

Harris polls best with young voters, female voters, and Black voters, among whom Harris has a +65 point lead.

While Harris and Biden both typically led among white college-educated voters, the recent CBS poll suggests that Harris has only a +5 point lead over Trump in this group — a far cry from the 20+ point lead she showed in other polls a few weeks ago.

A poll from Emerson College (August 12-14) shows that Kamala Harris is the only candidate of whom voters have an overall favorable opinion, at +2 percent.

This is significantly more positive than both Trump and his running mate Vance, who have a net -10 unfavorable rating, according to the poll of 1,000 US likely voters.