” frameborder=”0″ class=”dcr-ivsjvk”>
While still within the margin of error, that’s an improvement over the 0.9 percentage point lead Harris held last week and a marked change from how statistically close the race was two weeks ago, before the candidates held their only scheduled televised debate on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia.
Polls have found that a majority of voters believe Harris won that match-up, after Republican candidate and former president Trump effectively self-destructed by going off topic about rally attendance and making claims that many deny: Haitian immigrants eat their pets.
A New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena national poll conducted on Thursday found the candidates tied at 47% support — a slight improvement for Harris compared with the one-point lead Trump had in the same survey before the debate.
Other national polls have been favorably looking at Harris, including a Morning Consult poll (based on more than 11,000 respondents) that showed her holding a six-point lead, 51% to 45%, her largest lead since she supplanted Joe Biden as the top Democratic candidate.
” frameborder=”0″ class=”dcr-ivsjvk”>
There are other underlying trends that give Harris reason to be cautiously optimistic.
One is her strong performance in battleground states, which are key stages in determining the outcome of the Nov. 5 election under the U.S. Electoral College system.
The same New York Times/Siena poll that showed the two candidates neck and neck nationally also showed Harris holding a four-point lead, 50% to 46%, in Pennsylvania, which many observers say is the most crucial battleground state in winning the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
The survey is backed up by another poll from Quinnipiac University, which gives Harris a six-point lead in the state, 51% to 45%.
Additionally, a Quinnipiac University poll found Harris leading in two neighboring battleground states, Michigan and Wisconsin, by 5% and 1%, respectively.
Winning all three of these states, sometimes referred to by Democrats as the “Blue Wall,” would ensure Harris a narrow Electoral College victory even if she doesn’t win any of the four Sun Belt states where the two candidates are statistically tied — North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
But even in this optimism, there is a caveat to the vice president: Trump significantly outperformed polling expectations in the blue wall states in the past two elections, winning all three in 2016, but lost each by about 1 percentage point in 2020, when Biden had a far larger lead in the polls.
Still, pollsters are seeing shifts from the last election that favor Harris and a weakening of Republicans’ expected advantage in the Electoral College, where Trump won the 2016 presidential election despite receiving 2.7 million fewer votes nationwide than his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Nate Cohn, chief polling analyst at The New York Times, called Harris’ lead in Pennsylvania but her tie with Trump nationally “puzzling,” but said it was consistent with most other polls.
“Many polls over the past month have shown Harris with relatively low approval ratings nationally but performing well in northern battleground states,” he wrote.
“What is clear is that the results of recent high-quality polls differ significantly from those of the last presidential election. If this is true, it means that Trump’s Electoral College advantage relative to the popular vote has declined significantly since 2020.”
Ms Harris has another reason to pat herself on the back: She has narrowed the gap between her and Mr Trump on which candidate is more trusted on the economy.
Polls show the economy remains the top issue for most voters, reminiscent of the “It’s the economy, stupid” mantra coined by James Carville, the Democratic activist who helped Bill Clinton win the 1992 election.
But the large lead Trump held over Biden appears to have shrunk since Harris was nominated, amid persistent concerns about inflation and the rising cost of living, another poll showed.
An Associated Press/NOKE poll released Friday found that 41% of voters trust Harris to manage the economy, while 43% support Trump — a margin that’s nominal given the former president’s attempts to smear his opponent with Biden’s unpopular economic record.
The results confirmed an earlier Morning Consult poll that found both candidates tied on confidence in the economy at 46%, though a FT-Michigan Ross poll conducted after the debate gave Harris a slight lead.
Sophia Baig, an economist who wrote the Morning Consult survey, said Harris had managed to avoid criticism of Biden’s policies while winning over voters with her promise to crack down on price gouging and prescription drug costs.
“Many voters are unhappy with the current economy, but say Vice President Kamala Harris is less responsible than President Biden,” she wrote. “Throughout this election, voters consistently said they trusted former President Trump more than Biden on handling the economy, but Harris closed the gap.”
© 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliates. All rights reserved. (dcr)
