It’s not just vibes. Harris is polling really well.

We are in the middle of a Harris surge. Basically all election experts agree on that, and it shows up in numerous metrics. Harris is doing at least two percentage points better than Biden was in all seven major swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), according to a Post average of recent surveys. That’s big — all seven states were determined by fewer than three points in 2020.

Biden trailed Trump by about three points in national polls before he dropped out, according to FiveThirtyEight. Harris leads by two. A five-point swing is huge in today’s deeply polarized politics.

Election analyst Nate Silver estimates that Harris has a 55 percent probability of victory, compared with the 27 percent odds he gave the president before Biden left the race.

Harris’s gains are coming from across demographics. She is doing better than Biden was among Black, Latino and White voters, those under 45 and over 45, and Democrats and independents, according to recent surveys of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin residents conducted by Split Ticket and Data for Progress.

And she is doing better than Biden was in several different regions. Before he ended his candidacy, Biden was on a trajectory where he would have had to essentially concede Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina to Trump, with his only path to victory being sweeping Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In contrast, Harris seems competitive in all seven of those states. The Cook Political Report has changed its ratings to classify Arizona, Georgia and Nevada as toss-up states. When Biden was the Democratic candidate, Cook said Trump was the favorite in all three.

So Harris has multiple potential paths to victory.

Journalists, political strategists and others have a lot of theories for why Harris is doing better: her strong rollout and the entire Democratic Party quickly consolidating around her; Harris’s emphasis on freedom in her speeches; the pro-Harris Zoom calls and other signs of dramatically increased enthusiasm among activists. I don’t want to rule out those factors.

But the most important explanation is the obvious one: Many voters, including left-leaning ones, had been saying for years that they felt Biden was too old and that they wanted a different Democratic candidate. Harris is not 81, is not named Biden and is not the incumbent president.

As someone who really doesn’t want another term of Trump, I love seeing these shifts. But while the past month has moved the race in the Democrats’ direction, it’s still very close. The Post’s polling average still has Trump ahead in all but two (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) of the seven swing states. Trump would almost certainly win the election if he finished ahead in the other five.

Other experts (such as Silver) say Harris is ahead in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which would probably put her at exactly the 270 votes required to win the presidency. That’s way too narrow a margin for comfort.

Silver estimated that Trump had a 29 percent probability of winning the presidency on Election Day 2016 and a 10 percent probability in 2020. He puts Trump’s chances around 45 percent now. RealClearPolitics says that Harris has a lead of less than one point nationally right now, compared with Clinton’s six-point margin in mid-August 2016 and Biden’s eight points around this time in 2020.

And we may be at the height of Harris’s popularity. Trump and his campaign were surprised that Democrats dumped Biden and so were caught flat-footed. But I assume they will soon find criticisms of Harris that resonate with independent and swing voters. News outlets wrote numerous stories in 2016 about Clinton’s use of a nongovernment email server as secretary of state and this year about Biden’s age. There is likely to be some controversy around Harris that the media collectively emphasizes over the next few months.

The vice president is under pressure to describe her policy plans in greater detail. It is almost inevitable that she will annoy some potential supporters as she takes more specific positions on major issues.

But let me finish with the positive: The start of Harris’s presidential campaign has been better than almost anyone expected. She received a wave of endorsements from the moment the president left the race, essentially ending the post-Biden primary in less than 24 hours. Her speeches have been strong. The rollout of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate was flawless. After Harris made her first gaffe, scolding pro-Palestinian protesters at an event in Michigan and implying that were helping Trump, she shifted to more conciliatory rhetoric at an event a few days later in Arizona.

I can’t tell if Harris is a much better politician than many thought; the circumstances are ideal (inheriting a party that was eager to mobilize beyond anyone who was not 81 years old); or a combination of both. Either way, the polls are really great for Harris right now. And it’s probably the strong numbers that are creating the positive vibes — not the other way around.

Perhaps Harris will have a 27 percent probability (where Biden was before he dropped out) of winning by next month. But I think it’s much more likely that she will be at 73 percent by then.