This past Thursday marked just two months until Election Day! When we last checked in about a month ago, the dramatic switch from Biden to Harris had seemingly shaken up the race, and strengthened the Democratic Party’s position. Since then, we’ve had Harris officially become the nominee, her popular and meme-inspiring choice of Tim Walz as her running mate, and the Democratic convention. We’ve even had enough time for the effect of the convention to fade and normalize a bit, and Robert Kennedy Jr. abandoning his third party bid and endorsing Trump for good measure. So, given all of this, how are things looking?

To start with, Harris has maintained her lead in both the Real Clear Politics and 538 national polling averages, and in fact widened it in both versus a month ago. The more robust of the two, 538 (which weights things according to pollster track record and history of partisan lean, and adjusts for state polling), has a Harris margin just a smidge outside the typical margin of error of around 3%, so it’s close, but the momentum for Harris is clear in each average:

Polls of the swing states are showing a similar momentum toward Harris*. RCP now shows Harris leading in 4 of 7 with another one even, and 538 with its more robust methodology has her ahead in 5 of 7. It’s important to note that all of these leads in either direction are within the margin of error. And, per the * above, Harris now has leads in more states than a month ago, but also has seen some tightening in two of her leads versus a month ago. All in all this is a picture of a very close race, but the overall movement is toward Harris:

As you might expect from the state trends, the electoral vote outlook for Harris has improved over a month ago, and even the more Republican-tilted RCP map shows the Democrats ahead for the first time since we started tracking in May. Again it’s a narrow margin, a flip of any single swing state here could put Harris behind (or, if it’s a Trump state, give her a stronger lead):

The approval ratings comparison is now much clearer than a month ago as well. Harris has basically pulled even in net approval, whereas Trump’s negative numbers have widened somewhat, and are now approaching 10%. Once again, advantage Harris:

Democrats are also recording their largest lead this year in the Generic Congressional ballot:

And, while there haven’t been new data points on this since a month ago, in nearly 100 recent special elections through the end of July, Democrats have outperformed by an average of 6% against the partisan lean of the races in question (per a spreadsheet compiled by Nathaniel Rakich of 538):

Again, no change in this, but it remains true that Biden’s percentage in Democratic primaries was ahead of Trump’s in Republican primaries, indicating that Trump had more wavering partisan supporters to bring home than Biden:

In the one contra-indicator since last time, Trump has now re-taken a small lead against Harris in Presidential betting markets:

Putting all this together, Harris is even more clearly outperforming Trump at this point than she was a month ago. Not only is almost all the motion over the past month toward her, but with Kennedy out and the conventions concluded, the undecideds are now down to about 8.5%, meaning there are fewer folks out there to sort out.

At the same time, it’s difficult to miss that the numbers indicate a close race. It is now time for our standard disclaimer that the 2016 election came down to 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and the 2020 election came down to 42,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin. Even if we take on face value 538’s 3% national lead for Harris, that’s right in the middle of Clinton’s 2016 +2.2% and Biden’s 2020 +4.5%, and both of those were squeakers on the electoral college front.

Still and all, there’s no mistaking the movement toward Harris over a month ago:

We’ll check in again in October, at which point we’ll have another debate or two behind us, and one month to go!