Democratic nominee Kamala Harris led Republican nominee Donald Trump 45% to 41% in a poll that showed voter enthusiasm has been boosted by the vice president, making a dent in the race ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Harris’ 4-point advantage among registered voters was larger than her 1-point lead over the former president in a poll conducted in late July. The new poll, conducted in the eight days ending Wednesday and with a margin of error of 2 percentage points, showed Harris’ support has increased among women and Hispanics.
Harris led Trump 49% to 36%, a 13-point margin, among women and Hispanics. In four polls in July, Harris led by 9 points among women and 6 points among Hispanics. Trump leads among white voters and men, by a similar margin to July, though his lead among voters without a college degree has narrowed to 7 points in the latest poll, down from 14 points in July.
The results illustrate how the U.S. presidential race has been shaken over the summer. President Joe Biden, 81, was forced to end his campaign on July 21 after a disastrous debate performance against Trump, prompting widespread calls from fellow Democrats to abandon his reelection bid. Harris has since gained ground against Trump in national and swing state polls. While national polls provide important clues about voters’ views, it is the state-level Electoral College results that determine the winner, and a handful of swing states are likely to be crucial in determining the final outcome. In the seven states where the 2020 election was close — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Nevada — Trump led Harris 45 percent to 43 percent among registered voters in the poll.
Harris led Trump by 2 percentage points
Harris was ahead or tied with Trump in each of those states. The poll showed Harris led Trump by 2 percentage points among registered voters across all seven states, and was ahead by 1 percentage point among likely voters. The margin of error was 1 percentage point in all seven states. Responding to the poll results, Matt Wolking, a Republican campaign strategist who worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign, said: “Obviously, running against Harris is more challenging for Trump given the shift in those numbers, but it’s certainly not impossible.”
Matt Wolking said Trump needs to stay as focused as possible in his campaign “so as not to scare away” voters who have been leaning toward him because they dislike Biden. Since formally accepting the Democratic nomination last week, Harris has been touring swing states, including Georgia, where Biden had been struggling with declining support before ending his campaign.
In a poll she conducted, about 73% of registered Democratic voters said they were more enthusiastic about voting in November after Harris entered the race. While the March poll showed that 61% of respondents who intended to vote for Biden did so primarily to block Trump, 52% of Harris voters in the August poll voted to support her as nominee rather than to oppose Trump in the first place. “What we see in this poll is that people are more motivated by the future than they were in the past,” the organization’s founder said. “They see Kamala Harris as future, while Republicans see this election as all about Trump. Voters are more likely to engage when they are given the option of ‘more than’ defeating Trump, with 64% saying their choice was motivated more by supporting Trump than opposing Harris. Voters chose Trump as having a better approach to managing the U.S..
Issues of Great Importance to Democrats
By contrast, Harris held a 47% to 31% advantage on abortion policy, an issue of major importance to Democrats after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a woman’s national right to abortion in 2022. Trump nominated three conservative justices to the court during his presidency from 2017 to 2021. About 41% of voters in the poll — and 70% of Democrats — said they were concerned the next president might sign a national ban on abortions. The latest poll period coincided in part with the Democratic National Convention, held from Aug. 19 to 22 in Chicago, where Harris formally accepted her party’s nomination. It remains to be seen whether the same level of enthusiasm for Harris will continue. The poll was conducted nationally, and collected responses from 4,253 U.S. adults, including 3,562 registered voters. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his campaign on Aug. 23 while the poll was still ongoing, was supported by 6% of voters in the poll.
Kamala Harris defended some of her personal policy shifts toward the center on Thursday, announcing that she might run as a Republican for her cabinet if elected. It came in her first interview with a major news organization since the Democrats nominated her for president. In an excerpt from the interview, which will air at 9 p.m. ET (0100 GMT Friday), she said, “I think the most important and salient aspect of my political views and decisions is that my values have not changed.”
Harris has moved toward the center on some issues since running for president in 2020 until taking over from President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ choice to face former Republican President Donald Trump in the Nov. 5 election. Harris has hardened her stance on immigration along the southern U.S. border with Mexico.
Criticism from opponents and some concern among supporters
“My values about what we need to do to secure our borders haven’t changed,” she said. “I spent two terms as California’s attorney general prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, violations of U.S. laws, illegally moving guns, drugs, and people across our borders. My values haven’t changed.” Harris’s speech was intended to demonstrate her ability to handle the issues. Some critics suggested she may be less adept at off-script positions after leading the Democratic turnaround with a series of powerful campaign speeches.
While she has taken questions from reporters on the campaign trail and been interviewed on TikTok in recent days, Harris has not given a one-on-one interview to a major news network or print journalist since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid on July 21 and endorsed him as the nominee. Bash, who co-moderated the June 27 debate between Donald Trump and Biden that precipitated the president’s withdrawal from the race, conducted the interview in Savannah.
Harris’s lack of interviews has drawn criticism from opponents and some concern from supporters, given that her positions are less strident in spontaneous settings than at rallies or speeches where she can use prepared remarks and a teleprompter. Harris and Walz arrived at Kim’s Cafe to record the interview. Before Harris selected Walz as her running mate in the Nov. 5 election, Walz gave a series of interviews to major television networks. Trump holds frequent press conferences and offers interviews to conservative media outlets, often using them to criticize Harris and Biden rather than discuss his policy goals in detail. On Thursday, Harris campaigned in Savannah, Georgia, telling a crowd of 7,500 that “we have some hard work ahead of us” to defeat Republican challenger Trump, but she was confident Georgia would vote Democratic again after Biden-Harris’s narrow win there in 2020.
