2024 US presidential polls tracker: Trump v Harris latest national averages

On 21 July, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris. This historic move changed the landscape of the election and how many felt about the race. As the election enters its final weeks, Guardian US is averaging national and state polls to see how the two candidates are faring. We will update our averages once a week, or more if there is major news.

Latest analysis: Amid a dramatic news cycle that has seen the US hit by two destructive hurricanes and rising fears of all-out war in the Middle East, the Guardian’s 10-day polling average tracker showed the vice-president and Democratic nominee with a two-point lead. But anxiety around the vice-president’s chances are high because of the polling in what are generally regarded as the seven key battleground states that will determine who ends up in the White House: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

Yet the margins are perplexing for Democratic strategists, given that the vice-president’s campaign recently disclosed that it had raised $1bn within 80 days of Harris replacing Joe Biden as the party’s nominee in July. The amount greatly surpasses that raised by Trump’s campaign. – Robert Tait, 12 October

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Notes on data

To calculate our polling averages, Guardian US took a combination of head-to-head and multi-candidate polls and calculated a rolling 10-day average for each candidate. Our tracker uses polls gathered by 538 and filters out lower-quality pollsters for national polls. Our state polling averages use a lower quality threshold for inclusion due to the small numbers of state polls. If there were no polls over the the 10-day period, we leave the average blank. On 11 Oct Guardian US began rounding averages to the nearest whole number to better reflect the lack of certainty in the polling figures.

Polling averages capture how the race stands at a particular moment in time and are likely to change as the election gets closer. Averages from states with small numbers of polls are also more susceptible to errors and biases. Our averages are an estimate of the support that the candidates have in key swing states and on the national stage. The election is decided by the electoral college, so these averages should not be taken as a likelihood of winning the election in November.

Read more about the US election:

Harris regains small poll lead post-debate as US election inches closer

Can 0.03% of votes really swing the presidential election?

Who is running for president?

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Read our polling analyses from 7 September, 4 September and 30 August

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Candidate illustrations by Sam Kerr