The technical tie is stubborn. A week after the end of the Democratic convention, and 12 days before the televised debate that will pit the two US presidential candidates against each other, Vice President Kamala Harris maintains the momentum she has maintained since she became the leader of the Democratic ticket, and is slightly advancing in the polls. But Republican Donald Trump, firmly supported by his voters, is not letting her get any further ahead. The equality in voting intention, especially in the swing states that will decide the November elections, is almost absolute.
The Democratic candidate appears to have received a certain boost after the success of the Democratic convention in Chicago and a week of mostly positive media coverage. Five polls after the close of the party’s conclave give her a lead over her rival of up to four percentage points, and find Harris gaining ground among women, Latino voters and young people: part of the coalition of minorities that represents the base of the Democratic electorate. These groups had distanced themselves from a Biden whom they considered too old to assume a second term and with whose policies – especially around the war in Gaza, in the case of the youngest – they did not necessarily agree.
According to a poll conducted by Ipsos and published by Reuters on Thursday, the vice president leads her Republican rival nationwide by four percentage points, 45% to 41%, among registered voters. The margin of error for this survey is 2%.
A month ago, the same poll gave Harris a one-percentage-point lead. The new survey finds that the vice president’s rise is driven, above all, by the enthusiasm she arouses among the Democratic base. The candidate sees her voting intention increase among women and Latino voters: among both groups, she leads Trump by 13 percentage points, 49% versus 36%. In July, she led the Republican by nine points among women and only six among Latinos.
Another survey, conducted by Suffolk and published by USA Todaypaints a picture in which Harris leads Trump by more than four percentage points, 47.6% to 43.3%. A radical turnaround compared to two months ago, when the Republican was ahead of Joe Biden by three points (41% to 38%) after the televised debate between the two in which the president had a catastrophic performance, a setback that led to his withdrawal from re-election.
According to this poll, the Democratic candidate has the support of 76% of African-American voters, a gap of 47 percentage points with respect to the support received by Biden and 64 points with respect to Trump. Among young people, Harris leads her Republican rival by 13 points (49%-36%), while two months ago it was the former president who remained in the lead among those under 34 years of age, by 11 percentage points.
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
Other polls, published by The Economistand Yahoo News also place the vice president ahead of her rival, although by similar distances to those she already enjoyed before the convention.
Tie in key states
However, the poll results are less flattering for the vice president in the seven key states (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona). In these, according to the Reuters poll, the former president is ahead of Harris by two percentage points, 45-43%. The aggregator of electoral polling expert Nate Silver places Harris 3.5 percentage points ahead of Trump (49% versus 45.5%) across the country, but points to much tighter results in the swing states: in Georgia, Trump is ahead by 0.6 percentage points; in North Carolina, the vice president is ahead by just four-tenths.
In a sign of the importance of those key states, Harris was on a bus tour of Georgia on Thursday with her number two, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Next week she will travel to Pennsylvania with Biden and also visit Michigan, her campaign has said.
By contrast, a poll for the conservative television network Fox News, released on Wednesday, shows the vice president ahead of her rival in the swing states of Georgia, Nevada (two percentage points) and Arizona (one point) thanks to “strong support among women, African-American voters and young people,” while Trump has a one-point lead in North Carolina. In 2020, the former president won that state by less than one percentage point, while Biden won the remaining three by narrow margins.
The Fox News poll, Trump’s go-to journalist, says Harris is the preferred candidate by voters as the candidate most willing to fight for ordinary people and the one who can best unite the country. Those surveyed, on the other hand, lean towards Trump when it comes to managing the economy or the situation at the border.
“Predictions for November couldn’t be closer to 50%-50%,” Silver writes on her blog, Silver Line. Meanwhile, the director of the veteran electoral analysis website Cook Report, Amy Walter, points out that, although Harris has been improving her results in the polls since she took over from Biden as the Democratic candidate, Trump has not backed down in his. “The electoral competition is tightening, not because Harris is taking votes away from the former president, but because Democrats and independents with Democratic leanings are returning to the fold,” says this expert.
This week’s polls confirm this. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 73% of Democratic voters say they are more enthusiastic about voting in November since Harris entered the race. In March, that poll found that 61% of Democratic voters planned to go to the polls, mainly with the idea of preventing Trump from winning. Now, 52% say they will go to the polls to support Harris, rather than to vote against the Republican.
Meanwhile, the technical tie continues, awaiting the possible impact of events on the horizon, including the reappearance of the criminal cases against the former president. On Thursday night, Harris’ first interview as a presidential candidate will be broadcast on CNN, in which the vice president will be accompanied by Walz. On September 10, the debate between the vice president and Trump will take place.
Follow all the information on the US elections atour weekly newsletter.