Bombshell poll shows one party’s candidate ahead for first time in 16 months

A shocking Wall Street Journal poll found the Democratic candidate leading the presidential race for the first time in 16 months.

Kamala Harris has a 48% to 47% lead over Donald Trump, a poll comparing the two candidates found. When independents and third-party candidates were included, she had a 47% to 45% lead.

It’s a stark contrast to the time when Joe Biden was the Democratic presidential nominee and consistently trailed Trump in the polls.

Friday’s poll of the Wall Street Journal was the first time the Democratic candidate had led since April of last year. Trump had a 2-point lead over Harris in the Journal’s head-to-head poll in late July.

The magazine conducted the poll after the Democratic National Convention ended, and Harris was expected to get a boost from the event.

But she also leads Trump in the RealClearPolitics poll average, by almost two points.

Looking at the polls in the states where the outcome is uncertain, the race looks tighter.

A Emerson College Polling/The Hill Poll On Thursday it was announced that Harris and Trump are tied.

Of the seven states that weigh the most, Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin are winning for Trump, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada for Harris, and Pennsylvania is the frontrunner.

Digging deeper into the Wall Street Journal polls, we see some warning signs for the Trump campaign.

Harris’ popularity remains high despite Trump’s repeated attacks on her.

Both parties are trying to define Harris, since she was nominated just a month ago. Much of last week’s Democratic National Convention was focused on introducing her to voters.

About 84% of respondents said they knew enough about Harris to have a strong opinion of her, with 49% having a positive opinion of her, the same percentage as those with a negative opinion.

About 45% had a positive view of Trump and 53% a negative view.

The biggest warning for Trump’s campaign, however, is the economic numbers.

Trump leads Harris by 8 percentage points when voters are asked who is doing a better job of managing the economy. When it comes to tackling inflation, he leads Harris by 5 percentage points.

But by the end of last year, Trump had a lead of about 20 points over Biden on both counts.

That suggests Harris is making progress on this front and that voters, despite the Trump campaign’s efforts, are not holding her accountable for Biden’s handling of the economy, even though she is his vice president.

The economy is Harris’ biggest vulnerability. Voters are angry about the high cost of food, gas and housing. Biden got very low marks for his handling of inflation, which dragged down his overall approval ratings.

In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Harris defended her and Biden’s work on the economy, saying the COVID pandemic and Trump had put them in a difficult position.

“When Joe Biden and I came into office during the height of a pandemic. We saw over 10 million jobs lost,” she said. “Hundreds of people died that day from COVID, the economy had largely collapsed. All of that was Donald Trump’s mismanagement of that crisis. When we came into office, our number one priority was to do what we could to save America.”

Donald Trump’s arguments about Kamala Harris don’t seem to stick, poll finds

But when asked why she hadn’t implemented any of the policy proposals she put forward as part of her campaign when she was vice president, Harris again returned to the pandemic: “We had to recover as an economy and we did. I’m very proud of the work we did to get inflation down to below 3%.”

She further pointed out that the Biden administration has lowered the cost of insulin, created more than 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, extended child benefits and improved the supply chain.

The Wall Street Journal poll also looked at the running mates.

It found that voters are more likely to view Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, positively than negatively, by 46% to 40%.

Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, was viewed more unfavorably than favorably, 50% to 40%.