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Kamala Harris has a huge lead over Trump in national and swing state polls.
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Harris’ campaign has galvanized voters and reversed Biden’s previous deficits in key states.
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Polls show Harris gaining support from black voters, college-educated white women and independents.
A series of new polls show one key trend: The race for the White House has gone in Kamala Harris’ favor.
Since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic front-runner less than four weeks ago, Harris’ campaign has inspired a wave of youthful energy and enthusiasm among weary voters and a once-struggling Democratic Party.
And that momentum has led to Harris surpassing Trump in national polls and even slightly surpassing Trump in key swing states.
In nearly every crucial state, Harris holds a narrow lead over Trump, according to a new poll from the Cook Political Report Swing State Project.
The poll, released Wednesday, shows Harris with a 2-point lead over Trump in a race among third-party candidates in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
And in a head-to-head matchup between those states, Harris held a 1-point lead over her Republican opponent.
While that lead is still small, it shows how much ground Harris has gained since Biden took her place. In May, the same poll found Trump had a 5-point overall swing state lead over Biden in a horserace matchup, and a 3-point overall lead in a head-to-head matchup.
In every battleground state, according to the Cook poll, Harris leads Trump by 2 to 5 points in a horserace matchup, with Georgia the only state where the two are tied. In May, Trump led in every front except Wisconsin, where he tied with Biden.
All polls show Harris swinging more toward the reins in the exciting 2024 race.
The last one New York Times/Siena College Polls also show Harris leading the former president by a four-point margin in the crucial swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When Biden was in her seat, an earlier version of the poll showed him with only a narrow lead in Wisconsin and trailing Trump in both Michigan and Pennsylvania.
And even in Florida — once considered a swing state but which has turned more solidly red in recent years — Harris has eroded Trump’s lead. In a Florida Atlantic University poll released Wednesday, Trump holds a 3-point lead over Harris among likely Florida voters, half the lead he had over Biden when the poll was conducted in June.
Harris isn’t just gaining ground in the polls in changing states.
According to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, Harris leads Trump by 2.7 points in an average of 14 national polls.
That’s a big jump from the days after Biden dropped out of the race, when Harris had an average national lead of just 0.8 percentage points over Trump, according to FiveThirtyEight.
In a national poll conducted by NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll and released last week, Harris crept out to a 3-point lead over Trump in both a horse race and a head-to-head matchup. That’s four points more than where Harris was in the same poll shortly after she replaced Biden in the race; Trump held a 1-point lead at the time.
And it’s black voters, white women with college degrees and independent women voters who are pushing Harris forward, the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found. Her favorability among these groups has increased by 20 to 30 points since she first took over the Democratic ticket, NPR reported.
Across the board, Harris is doing better than Biden did before he dropped out of the race. In an average of national and state-level polls, Harris does 7.2 points better when matched against Trump than against Biden, according to an analysis by statistician Nate Silver.
All the excitement surrounding Harris’ new campaign has infuriated Trump and led Republicans to claim it’s just a honeymoon.
Meanwhile, Harris is hoping her uptick in the polls isn’t temporary, and that she can ride the wave of momentum during a shortened campaign period and ultimately land in the White House.
Read the original article on Business Insider
