Signs continue to show that Vice President Harris’s entry into the presidential election has dramatically shaken up the 2024 landscape, with polls increasingly shifting toward the Democrat’s favor over GOP rival former President Trump.
Harris is now leading or tied with Trump in six of seven battleground states, according to poll findings released Wednesday, marking an upheaval since President Biden dropped his re-election bid last month.
The non-partisan Cook Political Report Swing State Project survey found Harris with an overall 1-point advantage across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In the seven-state bloc, 48 percent of voters support Harris, while 47 percent are backing Trump. Five percent of respondents said they are undecided or do not plan to vote.
The former president’s only lead in the battleground polling is in Nevada, but Harris has narrowed the margin there by 6 points since Biden was on the ticket. Harris and Trump are tied in Georgia, according to the poll.
A separate polling effort from Ipsos last week found Harris and Trump in a “statistical dead heat for the presidency” in swing states Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.
And a USA Today/Suffolk University/WSVN-TV poll released this week found Harris just 5 points behind Trump among likely Florida voters, or “within striking distance” as a pollster described it.
Harris appears to have roused the interest of voters who previously said they didn’t favor Biden or Trump winning a second term.
A Monmouth University poll has found the number of “double haters” has been cut in half since Harris became the Democratic nominee.
The survey found 8 percent of respondents did not have favorable views of either Harris or Trump, while 17 percent said they did not have favorable views of either Biden or Trump.
“Taking Biden out of the mix and replacing him with Harris has significantly altered a key metric in this race. As we reported last month, Trump-Biden double haters want to shake things up, but they are wary of change that is too authoritarian. Harris appears to provide most of this group with the fresh outlook they desire,” Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray said in a summary report.
The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s analysis of top polls shows that Harris has a 1.6 percentage point lead nationally, with 48.1 percent to Trump’s 46.5 percent. Biden was about 2 percentage points behind Trump in the analysis when he quit the race.
Harris will give her first major policy speech during a rally in North Carolina on Friday, after appearing alongside Biden in Maryland to discuss the economy on Thursday.
The Democratic National Convention kicks off in Chicago on Monday. Among the highlights expected: Biden is scheduled to speak Monday; former President Obama will address the crowd Tuesday; Harris’s running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will take the stage on Wednesday; and Harris will close out the convention on Thursday.
While campaigns tend to go quiet during opposing party conventions, Trump’s team has planned its own counterprogramming to the Democrats’ event.
Fox News reported that a Trump campaign adviser confirmed to the outlet that “a whole cadre of people” including Trump will be on the campaign trail.
“We’re certainly going to have key people in the battlegrounds and available to the media to counterprogram,” the campaign official told Fox.
Biden’s game-changing decision to end his re-election campaign and endorse Harris came just days after the conclusion of the Republicans’ gathering in Milwaukee last month.
