September 19, 2024
With two months remaining until the general election, a larger share of registered voters believe Kamala Harris will win compared to Donald Trump. However, a fifth think both candidates have an equal shot at the White House. Majorities of both Democratic registered voters and Republican registered voters think their respective candidate will win, while there is no consensus among independent registered voters.
In July, after the Republican convention but before Harris was officially designated as the Democratic nominee, the public was more likely to think Trump would prevail over Harris.
While registered voters are divided on whether Harris would make a good president, a slight majority think Trump would not. These views are heavily influenced by partisanship, with about 8 in 10 Democratic voters and Republican voters believing their respective party’s nominees would make a good president.
Registered voters also have more positive views of Harris than Trump as a candidate. While an equal share believe Harris and Trump are each tough enough to be president, slightly more think Harris would fight for people like them and would change the country for the better compared with Trump. And 6 in 10 think Trump will say anything to win the election compared with 4 in 10 who think the same about Harris.
Currently, about half of registered voters have a favorable opinion of Harris compared with 37% who have a favorable opinion of Trump. The candidates’ favorability ratings are currently similar to August. Last month, the August 2024 AP-NORC Poll found that 48% of the public had a favorable opinion of Harris and 41% had a favorable opinion of Trump.
The latest poll found that 88% of Democratic voters have a favorable view of Harris, while 77% of Republican voters have a positive opinion of Trump.
The public’s view of Joe Biden has remained steady since he dropped out of the presidential campaign. Forty-one percent have a favorable opinion of the president, and 55% have an unfavorable opinion. In the AP-NORC Center poll conducted in early July before Biden announced his withdrawal from the race, 38% had a favorable opinion of him and 58% were unfavorable.
The nationwide poll was conducted September 12-16, 2024 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 2,028 adults, including 1,771 self-reported registered voters. The overall margin of sampling error is +/- 3.1 percentage points; +/- 3.5 percentage points for registered voters.
- Suggested Citation: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (September 2024). “Voters have a more positive view of Harris than Trump”
