Kamala Harris expands her lead over Donald Trump in new poll

Vice President Kamala Harris has increased her national lead over Donald Trump by nearly three points since entering the race for the White House, according to a new poll.

The poll, conducted by Cygnal between October 2 and 3, showed Harris leading Trump by 3.3 points at 50.3 percent to 47 percent.

Previous Cygnal polls showed Harris increasing her vote share each month since the race began compared to Trump's consistent numbers. For example, in a poll released August 7, Harris was 0.6 points ahead of Trump at 47.6 percent to his 47 percent.

In a poll released on September 5, Harris' lead increased to 2.1 points, with the vice president receiving 49 percent of the vote while Trump received 46.9 percent.

The polls show that Harris' slight increases in margins are largely due to younger women and that some Republicans have moved in her direction since last month, with 59 percent of women under 55 supporting Harris.

That number is up from 55 percent in September, while 9 percent of Republicans surveyed this month said they support the vice president, up from 3 percent last month.

Meanwhile, independents and college-educated men have turned to polling toward Trump. According to the latest poll, 46 percent of independent voters now support Trump, up from 36 percent last month, while 45 percent of college-educated men now support the former president, up from 42 percent last month.

That wasn't the only good news for Trump. The poll also found a surge in the popularity of his running mate JD Vance after he and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz participated in a debate last month. 36 percent now viewed the Ohio senator very negatively, up from 40 percent before. 32 percent now view him very positively, up from 22 percent before the debate.

It was widely believed that Vance had won the debate, despite being among the most unpopular vice presidential candidates in recent history.

In July, Newsweek reported that, according to poll numbers, he was the first non-incumbent vice presidential candidate since 1980 to have a net-negative popularity rating after a convention.

Cygnal's most recent poll surveyed 1,500 likely voters and yielded a margin of error of +/- 2.5 percentage points.

Newsweek emailed the Trump and Harris campaigns seeking comment.

Despite the boost for the Trump/Vance campaign, the latest poll results are good news for the Harris Party, which appears to be still gaining traction a month before the election.

According to aggregator FiveThirtyEight's poll tracker, Harris leads Trump by 2.6 points nationally. In pollster Nate Silver's tracker, she is 3 points ahead.

Harris is also ahead in other individual surveys. For example, the latest New York Times/A Siena College poll conducted between September 29 and October 6 shows Harris leading Trump by three points among likely voters, 47 percent to 44 percent. The poll surveyed 3,385 likely voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 points.

However, the election will ultimately depend on what happens in the seven swing states.

Both FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver's tracker show Harris leading by 1 to 2 points in battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump continues to have slight advantages in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.

They are tied in Pennsylvania, according to FiveThirtyEight, and the state is crucial to winning in November. It has 19 votes in the Electoral College and has voted for the overall winner in 48 of 59 elections.

Harris needs 44 electoral votes from the battleground states to secure victory, while Trump needs 51. If Harris won the 2nd District in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska, she would meet the electoral threshold needed to win.

However, without Pennsylvania, Harris would not have enough votes to secure victory even if she won Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska's 2nd District, which would give her 32 electoral votes.

Although they are tied in Pennsylvania, FiveThirtyEight's forecast has Harris winning there as well as Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, putting her in position to claim the presidency. The poll aggregator predicts she will win a total of 277 electoral votes.

However, the close margins in these key battlegrounds suggest the race remains fiercely competitive and anyone can win. FiveThirtyEight recently noted that this narrow margin could lead to the closest presidential contest in nearly 150 years.

Despite Harris' lead, experts urge caution about the reliability of the polls because recent elections have shown inaccuracies.

In 2020, the American Association for Public Opinion Research called the election error the largest in 40 years, with polls overestimating Biden's lead in recent weeks. Similarly, in 2016, FiveThirtyEight gave Hillary Clinton a 71 percent chance of winning, but she ultimately lost the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote.

But while polls in the past have underestimated the level of support for Trump, experts believe they won't be as inaccurate this year because they have done a better job of counting likely Trump supporters who have undercounted in the past became. So Harris' lead in the polls may accurately reflect voters across the country.

“Many pollsters today are using past voting (history) to correct the Trump undercount,” Cliff Young, president of Ipsos Polling, said previously Newsweek.