This week’s Economist/YouGov poll looks at the 2024 election, views on Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the economy, foreign policy, child tax credits and the Kids Online Safety Act.

Note: This poll was completed before Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate on August 6.

The 2024 election

• Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump among registered voters, 45% to 43%. This is the second week in a row that Harris has led Trump, after months of Joe Biden either trailing or tying with Trump.

• Sixty percent of Democrats say they plan to vote in November’s election with great or extreme enthusiasm, a higher percentage than Republicans who plan to vote with such enthusiasm (58 percent).
  • Enthusiasm for Democrats has increased by 2 points (from 58% last week), while enthusiasm for Republicans has decreased by 9 points (from 67%
  • This is the first time since the Economist/YouGov poll began asking this question in March 2024 that Democrats are more excited about the November election than Republicans
• The increased enthusiasm for Harris has also changed Americans’ view of the likely winner of the presidential election. Forty percent of U.S. adults consider Harris the most likely winner of the presidential election, while 38 percent consider Trump the most likely winner.
  • This is the first time since October 2023 that Harris or Biden have been rated as more likely winners in the Economist/YouGov polls.

• Americans believe that Harris’ campaign is better managed than Trump’s. 50 percent of US adults say Harris’ campaign is well managed, 27 percent say it is poorly managed. Only 39 percent say Trump’s campaign is well managed, 42 percent say it is poorly managed.
• This week’s poll was conducted before Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate. 21% of U.S. adults had a very or somewhat favorable opinion of Walz, while 15% had a very or somewhat unfavorable opinion. The rest were unsure, a sign of how little known Walz was to the general public.

Views of Trump and Harris

• 46% of Americans have a very or somewhat positive opinion of Harris, more than the 41% who have a positive opinion of Trump and the 39% who have a positive opinion of Biden.
  • Before her nomination, the share of Americans who had a positive attitude toward Harris and Biden was similar. However, since she became the Democratic nominee, Harris’ popularity has risen while Biden’s has remained relatively stable.

• Forty-six percent of Americans say Harris spends more time explaining what she will do if elected, while 34 percent say she spends more time attacking her opponent.
  • In contrast, 30% of Americans say Trump spends more time explaining and 59% say he spends more time attacking
• Sixty-six percent of Americans say Harris is either liberal or very liberal, and 61 percent say Trump is either conservative or very conservative.
  • Americans are slightly more likely to say Harris is a moderate (18%) than Trump (14%). More Americans are unsure about Trump’s ideology (18%) than about Harris’ (18%).
  • Partisans tend to view the other party’s candidate as more ideological and their own candidate as more moderate. For example, 78 percent of Republicans say Harris is very liberal, compared to just 9 percent of Democrats. 45 percent of Democrats say Trump is very conservative, compared to 22 percent of Republicans.
  • Most Democrats say Harris is either liberal (49%) or moderate (32%), while most Republicans say Trump is either conservative (47%) or moderate (22%).

• More Americans say Harris cares deeply about the needs and issues of women, Black Americans, Asian Americans and poor Americans than do Trump. More Americans say Trump cares deeply about rich Americans, white Americans and men than do Harris

The economy

• Americans have had a generally poor opinion of the U.S. economy for years.
• This is partly political: when a Democrat is president, Democrats tend to view the economy more positively than Republicans, and vice versa.
  • 47 percent of Democrats say the state of the American economy is either good or excellent, compared to 8 percent of Republicans
  • There are much larger differences in views on the economy between members of different political parties than between people from high-income and low-income families.

• Views on the economy have not changed much over the past year, with 44% of U.S. adults currently saying the state of the U.S. economy is bad, almost identical to the 43% who said so in the Economist/YouGov poll conducted August 5-8, 2023

Foreign policy

• Most Americans (59%) somewhat or strongly support the recent prisoner exchange in which Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan and others were released from Russian captivity in exchange for Russians imprisoned in other countries. 15% somewhat or strongly oppose this deal and 26% are not sure.
  • Democrats are most likely to support the deal (78% approve/6% disapprove), but both Republicans (50%/26%) and independents (49%/13%) are more likely to support the swap than oppose it.
• The majority of Americans view France and Israel as allies or friends of the United States, while Russia and Iran are enemies or unfriendly. Americans are less confident about Turkey’s relations with the United States. 40 percent say they are not sure.

Child allowance

• A bill to expand the child tax credit and adjust payments for inflation was recently rejected in the U.S. Senate.
  • Both provisions are very popular. 72 percent of U.S. adults strongly or somewhat support expanding the child tax credit to low-income families, while 57 percent support adjusting the tax credit for inflation.
  • Only 13% are against any measure
• In general, 42% of Americans believe that people with dependent children should pay less in taxes than people without children, while 33% believe they should not.
  • People who are parents or guardians of children under 18 strongly support tax breaks for children: 61% are in favor and 19% are against. Among non-parents, opinion is divided: 37% are in favor and 37% are against.

Online safety for children

• Congress is still debating the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would make technology companies legally responsible for recommending harmful content to minors. Supporters say the law would protect children, while critics say it violates the First Amendment and burdens private companies. Americans are positive about the bill’s goals: 60 percent say making websites legally liable for recommending harmful content to minors would likely improve children’s online safety, while 19 percent say it would overload websites and lead to censorship of legitimate content.
• A related bill currently under consideration, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, would require websites to obtain parental consent before collecting information from children under 16. Fifty-seven percent of Americans say this would primarily protect the privacy of minors, while 23 percent say it would restrict minors’ access to online resources.

Some numbers in this report may differ by 1 due to rounding.

— Taylor Orth contributed to this article

Check out the Toplines And Crosstabs for the Economist/YouGov poll from 4 to 6 August 2024

methodology: The survey was conducted among 1,618 U.S. adults. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to represent U.S. adults. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, education, voter turnout in the 2020 election and presidential election, base party affiliation, and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets are from the 2019 American Community Survey. Base party affiliation is the respondent’s last response before November 1, 2022, and is weighted by the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democrat, 31% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 3%.

Image: Getty (Megan Varner / Stringers)

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