Honestly, if you spent any time looking at the news in 2024, you probably felt like you were watching a ping-pong match where the ball was invisible. One day a headline screamed that the incumbent was finished. The next, a new candidate had "all the momentum." But when we actually look back at who led the polls in 2024, the story isn't just about one person being ahead. It’s about how the lead shifted—or didn’t—during some of the most chaotic months in American political history.
The polls weren't just a scoreboard. They were a fever chart of a country trying to make up its mind while the candidates themselves kept changing.
The Trump-Biden Grudge Match: A Frozen Tundra
For the first half of the year, the polling landscape was weirdly static. You've got to remember that from January through June, it was basically a rematch nobody seemed to want. Donald Trump held a consistent, albeit narrow, lead in most national polling averages during this stretch.
According to data from RealClearPolitics and 538, Trump stayed roughly 1 to 3 points ahead of Joe Biden nationally for months. It wasn't a blowout. It was a grind. Biden’s approval ratings were stuck in the high 30s or low 40s, mostly dragged down by concerns over inflation and his age. While Biden would occasionally tie or take a 1-point lead in a stray poll, the "aggregate" almost always favored Trump.
Then came the June 27 debate.
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That night changed everything. Before the debate, the race was a toss-up. After the debate, the polls plummeted for Biden. It wasn't just that he was losing; it was that his "floor" was falling out. By early July, Trump’s lead in swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona started stretching outside the margin of error.
The Kamala Harris Reset: A Summer Surge
When Joe Biden stepped aside on July 21 and endorsed Kamala Harris, the polling didn't just move—it teleported. Suddenly, the "double haters" (voters who disliked both Trump and Biden) had a third option.
Basically, Harris wiped out Trump’s lead almost overnight. By mid-August, she was leading in the national averages.
- The "Vibe" Shift: Harris went from a struggling Vice President to a candidate leading Trump by 2-4 points nationally.
- The Enthusiasm Gap: Democratic enthusiasm, which had been in the basement, shot up to match or exceed Republican levels.
- The Convention Bump: Following the DNC in Chicago, Harris hit her peak in the polls, leading in several "Blue Wall" states.
But here is what most people get wrong about who led the polls in 2024: leading the national popular vote poll doesn't mean you're winning the election. While Harris was up by 2 or 3 points in national surveys, the swing state polls remained a knife-edge.
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The Swing State Deadlock
In places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada, the polls were essentially a tie from September through Election Day. We are talking about leads of 0.2% or 0.5%. In the polling world, that’s just noise. It’s a coin flip.
Did the Polls Miss Something?
As we got into October, the "momentum" started to shift back toward Trump in the betting markets and some specific high-quality polls like the New York Times/Siena College surveys. While Harris still technically held a lead in the national average of who led the polls in 2024, the underlying data showed Trump making massive gains with demographic groups that used to be safely Democratic.
Pew Research later validated this, showing that Trump’s eventual victory was powered by a much more diverse coalition than in 2016 or 2020. He made double-digit gains with Hispanic voters and saw a significant rise in support among young men.
The polls didn't necessarily "miss" Trump this time like they did in 2016, but they struggled to capture the "low-propensity" voters—people who don't usually vote but showed up specifically for him.
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The Final Verdict
If you look at the final averages on November 4, 2024:
- National Polls: Kamala Harris led by about 1% to 1.2% in most major aggregates (538, Silver Bulletin).
- Actual Result: Donald Trump won the popular vote by about 1.5% and dominated the Electoral College 312-226.
So, while Harris "led" the polls in the final weeks, the polls were slightly biased toward the Democrats—roughly a 2-3 point error in Trump's favor. This wasn't a catastrophic failure of polling, but it was enough to make a "Harris +1" lead turn into a "Trump +2" reality.
Actionable Insights for Following Future Polls
If you're looking at polls for the 2026 midterms or beyond, keep these expert tips in mind:
- Ignore the "National" Lead: In a system with an Electoral College, a Democrat usually needs to be up by at least 3 points nationally to be safe. A 1-point lead is actually a danger zone.
- Look at "Likely Voters" vs. "Registered Voters": Polls of "Likely Voters" (LV) were generally more accurate in 2024 because they filtered out people who talk a big game but don't show up.
- Watch the Trend, Not the Number: Don't obsess over one poll showing a 5-point lead. Look at the "moving average." If a candidate is slowly sliding from +3 to +1 over a month, they are losing ground regardless of the lead.
- Check the "Undecideds": In 2024, the undecided voters broke late and they broke heavily for Trump. If you see 5-7% undecided in October, the race is still totally up for grabs.
To get a true sense of where things stand now that the 2024 cycle is over, your best bet is to follow non-partisan aggregators and always subtract or add 2 points to the "underdog" to see what a standard polling error would look like.