New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: A huge surge in Democratic optimism — but no big bounce for Harris — after the DNC

In the wake of last week's Democratic National Convention, Americans now think Vice President Kamala Harris has a better chance of winning the November election (39%) than former President Donald Trump (36%), according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

That’s a dizzying turnaround from last month, when President Biden (20%) was trailing Trump (53%) by 33 percentage points on the same question, and it reflects an enormous surge in Harris’s favorability rating and overall Democratic optimism since she replaced Biden as the party’s presumptive nominee in late July.

Yet in a sign of how polarized the U.S. remains, and how fixed Americans’ political allegiances have become, Harris (47%) leads Trump (46%) by only one point in a head-to-head matchup among registered voters — a margin that does not change (Harris 46% vs. Trump 45%) when third-party candidates are included on the hypothetical ballot.

The previous Yahoo News/YouGov poll — which was conducted just after the Republican National Convention but mostly before Biden ended his candidacy and endorsed Harris — found Harris and Trump tied at 46% apiece.

In other words, if Harris got a “bounce” from the DNC, it was a very small one — too small to alter the fundamentally deadlocked nature of the 2024 contest.

Harris’s improving image

The new survey of 1,788 U.S. adults, which was in the field from Aug. 22 to Aug. 26, shows that perceptions of Harris have improved significantly during the first month of her campaign.

When Harris entered the race, more Americans saw her unfavorably (51%) than favorably (40%). Now those numbers are level at 47% — a net positive shift of 11 points for the vice president. In contrast, 55% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Trump; just 42% view him favorably. Biden’s numbers are similar.

And Harris’s gains are not limited to Democrats. Since July, her favorability rating has risen 9 points among members of her own party (from 83% to 92%), 10 points among independents (from 30% to 40%) and 4 points among Republicans (from 5% to 9%).

Approval of Harris’s performance as vice president, meanwhile, has shot up 7 points overall, from 35% to 42%.

When respondents were asked to describe Harris and Trump by choosing from a list of 16 different adjectives — and selecting all that apply — a clear pattern emerged. For Harris, the most frequently chosen words were "focused" (38%), "optimistic" (38%), "honest" (32%) and "normal" (31%). For Trump, they were "dishonest" (43%), "chaotic" (43%), "extreme" (43%), "tough" (40%), "racist" (40%), “weird" (36%) and "divisive" (35%).

Asked if Trump is "fit to serve another term as president," slightly more Americans say no (47%) than yes (45%). The same Americans now say Harris is fit to serve, by a 50% to 37% margin.

Skyrocketing optimism among Democrats

The big upshot of Harris’s campaign honeymoon has been a corresponding surge in Democratic confidence. In July, just 45% of Democrats said Biden had the best chance of winning; now 79% say the same about Harris. The shift is evident among independents as well, who now give Harris (32%) and Trump (33%) even odds in November. Last month, Trump led Biden on this question by 48 points (60% to 12%).

Asked last month to select the "feelings that come to mind when thinking about the upcoming 2024 presidential election,” Democrats picked dread (51%), exhaustion (45%) and depression (34%) more often than anything else. Now they choose optimism (60%, up from 24%) and excitement (52%, up from 14%) instead — with huge declines in dread (25%), exhaustion (25%) or depression (9%).

On the flip side, more Republicans are expressing dread now (35%) than in July (25%).

This sense of Democratic hope has also fueled a significant shift among all adults in perceptions that the country is "generally headed in the right direction" (up to 29% from 19% in July) rather than "off on the wrong track" (down to 60% from 68% in July).

Among Democrats, the "right direction" number has shot up nearly 20 points (to 58%) since Harris entered the race. The last time it was that high was three years ago.

Compared with Biden, Harris now performs 2 points better among women, 4 points better among Latin Americans, 5 points better among 2020 Biden voters, 7 points better among Americans ages 18 to 29 and 11 points better among Black Americans. (These groups have small sample sizes and therefore larger margins of error than the survey as a whole.)

A successful DNC — and VP pick

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll also suggests that Harris has fared better than Trump in the first big moments of her candidacy: selecting a running mate and headlining a convention.

About three in 10 Americans reported watching the RNC in July; despite higher Nielsen ratings, almost exactly the same number reported watching the DNC in August.

Among those who watched or followed coverage of each convention, the DNC received better marks.

A full 40% rated the DNC as excellent or good; just 31% rated it fair or poor. For the RNC those numbers were 36% and 35%, respectively.

Harris's acceptance speech earned a rating of 34% excellent or good to 20% fair or poor. Trump’s speech was rated 31% excellent or good to 24% fair or poor.

Harris’s speech was seen as unifying (32%) more often than divisive (18%) by those who watched or followed coverage, while reactions to Trump’s speech were split (26% unifying, 25% divisive).

The number of Americans who say they’re more excited to vote after paying attention to the DNC (32%) was higher than the number who said the same thing about the RNC (24%).

Perhaps as a result, Americans also now give Harris higher ratings than Trump on questions of character and ability — which were front and center at the DNC in Chicago last week. A full 52%, for example, agree with the statement that Trump "cares only about himself"; just 36% say the same about Harris. A similar majority of Americans (53%) say Harris has the "mental ability a president needs," compared with 46% who say that about Trump. And fewer believe Trump “shares my values” (36%) than Harris (40%).

Other key Democratic convention themes — future vs. past; freedom vs. control— appear to be resonating as well. Americans now lean toward saying they will have "less freedom" if Trump wins (40%) than if Harris wins (34%), and more say the United States will "move forward" if Harris wins (39%) than say the same about Trump (34%). Just 10% of U.S. adults, on the other hand, think Harris will return the country "to the way it used to be" if elected — versus 32% for Trump.

By the same token, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has so far turned out to be a much more popular choice than Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance:

Vance has a net negative personal rating (34% favorable, 46% unfavorable), while Walz is rated favorably (38%) by almost the same number of Americans who rate him unfavorably (39%).

More Americans think Harris made the right decision in picking Walz (40% right, 28% wrong) than say the same about Trump's decision to pick Vance (32% right, 33% wrong).

And more Americans think Walz is ready to serve as president (38%) than say the same about Vance (30%).

Yet the election remains too close to call

So why are Harris and Trump still statistically tied? The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll offers some clues.

Few Americans see either party’s nominee as moderate: just 11% for Trump and just 16% for Harris. During the summer of 2020, an average of 28% of Americans saw Biden as a moderate choice, while just 45% saw him as liberal — versus 63% for Harris today.

Likewise, Trump and Harris remain tied on two key metrics: who is "up to challenges facing the U.S." (46% Trump, 44% Harris) and whether “people like me” will benefit if a certain candidate is elected (31% Trump, 31% Harris).

Trump has some narrow advantages as well.

The number of Americans who say the country will become "more safe" if Trump is elected (41%) is 9 points higher than the number who say the same about Harris (32%) — though four in 10 say the country will become less safe under either candidate. Biden's dismal job approval rating — 39% approve, 55% disapprove — is still hurting rather than helping his vice president. A full 39% of Americans say the “cost of living” is the most important issue when thinking about next year’s election — the next closest is “democracy” at 17% — and a plurality think Trump (45%) would do a better job handling affordability than Harris (40%). A similar plurality — 43% to 37% — believe Trump would do better than Harris on crime. While Harris has an 18-point advantage over Trump on abortion — an issue that featured prominently at the DNC — just 6% of Americans say it’s their most important issue.

Finally, the public is evenly divided — 37% to 37% — on the question of "which party, Democrats or Republicans, has the clearer plans to solve America's problems."

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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,788 U.S. adults interviewed online from Aug. 22 to 26, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to Nov. 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7%.