Kamala Harris’ Approval Rating One Month Before Election

It is exactly four weeks until Americans decide who will win the White House race on November 5, and Kamala Harris is enjoying her highest approval rating in three years.
Vice President Harris significantly tightened the race with Donald Trump after she took over from President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in July.
Although her approval rating has fluctuated since then, it has generally increased, hitting around the 40 percent bracket in August. Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns, via email, for comment.
Now, as of October 4, Harris has an approval rating of 45.6 percent, compared to a 46.7 percent disapproval rate, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
This -1.1 margin is the best that Harris’ approval rating has been since before October 2021, with 95 percent of polls projected to fall within this range.
Former President Trump, who does not have a current approval rating as he is not in office, had one of 44.2 percent on FiveThirtyEight when he was president on October 4, 2020, around four weeks before the November 3 election that year. This left a -8.1 percentage point margin between his approval rating and his disapproval rating of 52.3 percent.
Trump’s favorability rating, which is based more on the public’s general opinion about him rather than how he does his job, is at 43 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. He has an unfavorable rating of 52.6 percent, as of October 4 this year, leaving a -9.6 percent margin.
For comparison, Harris’ favorability rating on FiveThirtyEight is at 47.2 percent, compared to a 46.5 percent disapproval rating, with a +0.6 percent margin.
Just before the 2020 election, Trump was trailing behind Biden in FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast and in Real Clear Politics’ average of swing state wins.
Similarly, this year’s version of FiveThirtyEight’s election forecast, last updated on Monday, shows Harris as the favorite to win.
However, political pundit Steve Schier told Newsweek that, while Harris is ahead in many polls, her lead is within the margins of error in most surveys.
He said: “Harris has yet to effectively introduce herself to many voters. Her initial rollout was accompanied by many positive media messages, but the impression generated by that was in need of further development.”
Early voting in 20 states is already underway, with candidates in their last stretch of campaigning before Americans go to the ballot box.
The election will essentially come down to several key battleground states, the most critical being Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia.
Newsweek has created a map to show which states have Harris and Trump leading in the polls, based on FiveThirtyEight’s aggregates on October 2.
Harris has narrow leads in the Rust Belt swing states and Nevada, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregate. She leads Michigan by 1.8 points, Nevada by 1 point, Pennsylvania by 0.7 points, and Wisconsin by 1.8 points.
Trump is performing slightly better in the Sun Belt swing states. He leads in Arizona by 1.4 points, Georgia by 1.2 points and North Carolina by 0.6 points, according to the aggregate.