Former President Donald Trump has improved dramatically in national polling in 2024 compared to his showings in 2016 and 2020, according to a compilation of poll averages compiled over the past eight years by RealClearPolling.com.
Currently, in the multi-candidate polls, which also include Robert Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein, Chase Oliver and Cornell West, Trump is averaging 46.4 percent against Vice President Kamala Harris’ 48 percent.
But in 2016, in the multi-candidate polls, Trump only averaged 42.2 percent, but ending up garnering 46.1 percent in the national popular vote. The polls understated Trump’s actual support by 3.9 percentage points.
To be fair, they understated Hillary Clinton as well, by 2.7 percentage points, instead of 45.5 percent in the polls, she garnered 48.2 percent in the national popular vote.
That worked out to a net 1.2 percentage points in Trump’s direction for 2016.
In 2020, as the sitting president, Trump’s standing in the polls improved slightly to 43.2 percent, but his showing in the popular vote was still much higher, at 46.9 percent. Once again, they polls were off by 3.7 percentage points for Trump.
Whereas, on President Joe Biden, the national polls also understated Biden, but not as much as they had with Clinton, by 0.8 percentage points, instead of 50.6 percent in the polls, he garnered 51.4 percent of the popular vote.
So, in 2020, it worked out to a net 2.9 percentage points in Trump’s direction in 2020.
That’s an average of polls overreporting the margin of Democrats’ lead in the popular vote by 2.05 percentage points.
If the same thing happens in 2024, where pollsters once again are having a hard time tracking down Trump supporters, right now, Harris is only leading in the national polls by 1.6 percentage points, meaning a net 2.05 percentage points in Trump’s direction would mean he actually wins the national popular vote — the first time a Republican would have achieved that feat since George W. Bush in 2004.
In the meantime, election forecaster Nate Silver is current reporting that if Harris’ margin in the popular vote is less than two points, Trump’s odds of winning the Electoral College rise to about 78 percent.
In this case, it could that the popular vote is in play, which if Trump wins, no Republican has ever won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College in U.S. history and Silver projects would give Trump a 98.3 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.
Another indicator could be whether Harris is able to above 50 percent in the national popular vote, something neither Al Gore at 48.4 percent and Hillary Clinton at 48.2 percent were able to do in 2000 and 2016, where they won the popular vote but ultimately lost the Electoral College, whereas Barack Obama and Joe Biden got majorities of the popular vote in their victories in 2008, 2012 and 2020.
For Harris, so far, in the multi-candidate polls, she’s well below 50 percent, so that might not be a good sign either. With economic uncertainty still looming, prices still too high and incomes not yet caught up, once the shy Trump voters who won’t talk to pollsters actually show up in the poll that matters on Election Day. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.