Jam-packed new national poll reveals crucial shift in momentum in Kamala Harris-Trump race
Kamala Harris has surpassed Donald Trump in a national poll conducted two days after President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.
The vice president has taken the lead nationally over her Republican rival after winning enough delegates to be named the Democratic nominee at the party’s convention in Chicago next month.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Harris ahead of Trump by 2 points in a head-to-head general election race, as she takes over the campaign in place of the ailing 81-year-old Biden.
This follows a series of other polls conducted after Biden suspended his campaign.
Trump had a narrow lead over Harris in polls, but speculation arose that Biden would not be on the list of candidates.
Several polls conducted as President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid showed Kamala Harris trailing Donald Trump in the 2024 race — but a poll released Tuesday finally showed the vice president surpassing the former president
But now that Harris is campaigning, the momentum appears to be turning in her favor.
In a July 1-2 poll conducted by the same service and with the same margin of error, Trump had a 1 percent lead over Harris, and in a July 15-16 poll they were tied at 44 percent.
Now that Harris is running for president instead of Biden, her odds have flipped: she has a 44 percent lead over Trump, 42 percent.
When independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was added to the poll, Harris’ lead widened to four points: 42 percent to 38 percent.
The first batch of national polls released after Harris declared her candidacy showed Trump beating the vice president.
According to a Morning Consult poll conducted on the day itself and immediately after Biden withdrew from the race on Sunday, Trump has a 47 percent lead over Harris, up from 45 percent.
Two other polls taken between Friday and Sunday showed Trump ahead by as much as 9 percentage points, a wider gap than his lead over Biden.
The dramatic poll results were also reflected in the betting markets, which made Republicans the clear favorites to win the November election.
Kamala Harris delivered her first solo speech on her presidential campaign trail in Wisconsin on Tuesday after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee
A Morning Consult poll also found that 65 percent of Democrats support Harris succeeding Biden as the party’s leader.
It found that 63 percent of Americans believe Biden should serve out the remainder of his term, while 30 percent believe he should resign now.
Biden stepped down four days after he was pulled from the campaign trail while campaigning in Nevada after testing positive for COVID-19.
He is isolating himself in his $3.4 million beach house in Delaware.
White House physician Kevin O’Connor has been providing daily updates on the president’s condition, but he has not been seen in public since his diagnosis on Wednesday.
Some Republicans are demanding “proof of life” from the president.
Biden is expected to return to Washington, D.C., from Delaware on Tuesday afternoon, his first appearance in six days.
Moments after sending his one-page letter to X on Sunday announcing he would resign, Biden sent a follow-up message on Twitter supporting his vice president to take over his campaign.
On Monday, Harris won the support of enough delegates to clinch the nomination at the Democratic National Convention next month.
Quinnipiac University released a poll taken the day after Biden dropped out. The poll, conducted Friday through Sunday, showed Trump ahead of Harris by 2 percentage points.
But when registered voters were asked to consider other candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein, Trump led runner-up Harris by 4 points with 41 percent.
Trump (pictured at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday) has a lead of at least 2 points and up to 9 percent over Harris
The largest difference between the vice president and the former president was 9 points, according to a Forbes/HarrisX poll. That poll, like the Quinnipiac poll, was conducted two days before and on the day Biden withdrew on Sunday.
Trump won 50 percent of the vote in that survey, compared to 41 percent for Harris.
Another poll by Point Politics/SoCal Research, conducted on the day Biden left office, found that 51 percent of voters supported Trump and 43 percent supported Harris.
The vice president has seen a fundraising boom. In the seven hours after Biden dropped out of the race, Democratic fundraising surged to a record $46.4 million.