Tumultuous Political Period Means Time Needed For Polls To Stabilise

There is significant focus on the new opinion polls coming out after President Joe Biden's withdrawal from the race. There are two polls from well-known outlets (Ipsos and YouGov) carried out following Biden's withdrawal with VP Kamala Harris as the (overwhelmingly likely) Democrat nominee.

• The latest from YouGov has Republican Donald Trump on 44%, ahead of Harris on 41%. Meanwhile, the Ipsos poll for Reuters has Harris leading Trump by 44% to 42%. Both of these results are within the margin of error.
• Given the tumultuous nature of the news cycle - the debate that set off the chain reaction for Biden's withdrawal occured under a month ago and it is only 11 days since the attempted assassination of Trump - it is likely that opinion polling will remain volatile in the short term.
• Pollster Nate Silver writes that polling could improve for Harris, claiming "In general, I’d expect a candidate’s numbers to improve when they go from a hypothetical candidate to an actual one, giving speeches and so forth. So that’s a good reason to focus only on the most recent data for Harris."
• In the YouGov poll Harris underperforms Democrats on a generic Congressional vote (46% Dem, 44% Rep) and Trump in the form of preferred president (Trump > Harris 48%, Harris > Trump 46%).
• Harry Enten at CNN posts on X about potential issues for Harris: "I looked into whether Harris has unique appeal to young voters. She doesn't. She's doing much worse against Trump than Biden did in 2020. Moreover, young Democrats are NOT disproportionately more motivated to vote than other Democrats because of Biden's exit".