State of the race: In a polling update from this morning, Nate Silver reports that "[Vice President Kamala] Harris's odds have declined slightly over the past two weeks, as she's gone from roughly a 55/45 favorite to a 45/55 underdog." There are a few factors at play: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropping out (helping former President Donald Trump), a subpar performance in Pennsylvania, and the Democratic National Convention (DNC) bump being a bit smaller than expected.
"Harris is, in fact, polling a bit better now than before the DNC—but only a bit better, with a 3.5-point lead in our national polling average as of Sunday versus 2.3 points before the convention," writes Silver. "The model's baseline expectation was a bounce of more like 2 points. By the model's logic, she's gone from a lead of 2.3 points to a convention-bounce adjusted lead of 1.5 points. That's not a game-changing difference, but it's enough to show up in the bottom line."
