Friday, July 26, 2024

Harris gets another poll showing a tightening race against Trump

The vice president is performing better than President Joe Biden did a month ago.



The Times poll adds another data point to an emerging trend since President Joe Biden exited the race: Vice President Kamala Harris is showing early signs of closing the gap. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO


By JARED MITOVICH
07/25/2024 
POLITICO US

Vice President Kamala Harris is neck-and-neck with former President Donald Trump after she replaced President Joe Biden as the likely Democratic nominee, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll published Thursday.

Among likely voters, Trump is at 48 percent to Harris’ 47 percent in a head-to-head matchup — narrowing the race to a virtual tie after Trump led Biden by six points when the Times polled the race in June. When third party candidates and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are included, Harris draws 44 percent of likely voters to Trump’s 43 percent, with Kennedy slumping to five percent.

The Times poll adds another data point to an emerging trend since Biden exited the race: Harris is showing early signs of closing the gap. And the poll found that both candidates benefit in different ways — Harris from a rise in popularity and major gains among several demographic groups, and Trump from a combination of continued strength with his base and his highest favorability ratings of the election.

Between Biden’s numbers in June and now, Harris has taken a 2 percentage-point lead over Trump among independent voters, flipping the former president’s previous 10 percentage point advantage She’s opened up a 14 percentage-point lead with women, a 21 percentage point lead with 18-29 year-old voters, a 24 percentage point lead with Hispanic voters, and 53 percentage point lead with Black voters — all double-digit increases over Biden’s numbers last month. Trump polls better than Harris among white, male and older voters.

Trump, meanwhile, appears to be benefiting from a more conventional dynamic: the convention bump, when candidates sometimes perform better in the polls after they accept the nomination at their party’s convention. Last week’s RNC was particularly unifying for Republicans, with the party rallying around the former president after he survived an assassination attempt.

Forty-seven percent of likely voters now hold a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump, gaining 9 percentage points since June and a record high in Times/Siena polls. At the same time, 45 percent of likely voters hold a “very unfavorable” view of him, up 6 percentage points from last month.

By comparison, 46 percent of voters hold a favorable view of Harris, rising from 36 percent when this question was last asked by the Times in February and higher than Biden’s. The president, who praised Harris and explained his decision to step aside in a somber Oval Office address on Wednesday, has seen an uptick in his favorability rating and job approval. Nearly 9 in 10 likely voters approve of Biden’s withdrawal, and 81 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters think the party should nominate Harris as its candidate.

The New York Times/Siena College poll was conducted July 22-24, surveying 1,142 likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

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