Donald Trump’s Got the Momentum. Can It Hold?

Former President Donald Trump appears to have captured the momentum from Vice President Kamala Harris just three weeks before Election Day.

With a polling advantage that Harris received following her September 10 debate performance having all but evaporated, the former president has recently received a string of favorable swing state poll results, although most suggest that the contest remains a dead heat.

Averages of polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight show that in recent weeks, Trump has expanded his small lead in Arizona, overtaken Harris in North Carolina and pulled to even in Nevada. The ex-president has also narrowed small leads for Harris in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Craig Agranoff, professor of political marketing at Florida Atlantic University, told Newsweek via text message that “Trump’s momentum in recent polls reflects his ability to tap into core voter concerns like the economy and national security, which tend to dominate in uncertain times.”

Agranoff added, however, that the former president’s ability to seize on the opportunity and win on November 5 was anything but certain, with Harris retaining the ability to turn the tables and recapture the momentum.

“Sustaining this momentum until Election Day will require maintaining discipline in his messaging and avoiding controversies that could alienate undecided or moderate voters,” Agranoff said.

“Harris, on the other hand, still has a pathway to regain ground, but it will depend on a strong, issue-based campaign that focuses on energizing key demographics and presenting a clear contrast to Trump on issues like healthcare and economic equality,” he added.

While Harris has continued to hold an advantage over Trump in national polling since shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her on July 21, her lead has slipped slightly despite a recent media blitz.

As of Tuesday, the vice president was leading Trump by 2.4 percentage points in the national FiveThirtyEight average, down from a 3.3 point lead on September 18.

University of Kentucky political science professor D. Stephen Voss said that polling was “going to bounce up and down a bit between now and Election Day” in an email to Newsweek, while warning against drawing too many conclusions from polls.

“The temptation will be to try to attach interpretations to every swing up or down in a candidate’s polling, but most of the time, short-term fluctuations in polling are not meaningful,” Voss said. “Poll respondents do not make their decisions in exactly the same way voters ultimately do.”

“Poll respondents are more likely to go with their guts, expressing however they’re feeling about the most-recent campaign events or messages, but by the time voters settle on an actual choice, they’re usually reaching down deeper into their political leanings,” he continued.

Voss went on to express doubts regarding the Trump campaign’s strategy of winning the election with “very high levels of support from men who have voted for Democrats in the past,” saying that it “isn’t impossible, but it’s a lot to ask from a campaign strategy.”

But there have been some other recent indications that the former president is gaining ground. Trump’s odds from online betting platforms, which are based on wagers made on candidates rather than polling data, have improved significantly over the past two weeks.

Polymarket, which was funded in part by early Trump backer Peter Thiel, gave the ex-president a 58 percent chance of winning back the White House as of Tuesday afternoon. Harris and Trump were tied on the platform as recently as October 4.