Current Vice President Kamala Harris is presently not leading in polls as strongly as the preceding two Democratic front-runners around this same time during their campaigns. Interestingly, she’s aligning closely with past President Donald Trump. Remarkably, Trump showcases an enhanced performance of over 3 points against Harris in principal competitive states compared to his standing against President Joe Biden in 2020, during the similar campaigns stage, as per the valuable insights from RealClearPolitics average.
Intriguingly, Trump’s polling figures show an almost 2 point improvement against Harris compared to against Hillary Clinton during the equivalent time period in 2016. From Cygnal, one of the premier and exceedingly precise Republican polling firms, the chief pollster expressed some concerns for Harris given this historical polling data.
As per Brett Buchanan from Cygnal, ‘Comparing where Biden stood against Trump at this instance, Harris isn’t faring as well.’ Particularly in Arizona, Harris is lagging threefold behind Biden’s lead among younger voters (+11 v +31). It appears Trump carries higher trust on two pivotal issues – inflation and immigration. Buchanan maintains the view, ‘This campaign still leans towards Trump.’
Cygnal’s most recent nationwide poll positions Harris with a slim 2-point lead over Trump. This puts her performance just about on par with the RealClearPolitics national average, which favors Harris by a slim 1.5 points. Interestingly, during this same period back in 2020, Biden lead against Trump by over 7 points on a national level, according to RealClearPolitics.
In contrast to the RealClearPolitics average, the FiveThirtyEight’s national polls average provides Harris with a marginally larger lead. The current numbers show Harris at 48.1% against Trump’s 45.5%. For swing states, Trump enjoys a razor-thin victory in Georgia and Arizona, whereas Harris retains a small lead in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as per FiveThirtyEight’s data.
In Nevada and North Carolina, these contenders exhibit a near tie, with a minuscule 0.3 points distinguishing them. Cygnal also publicized a poll for Michigan, a critical battleground state, demonstrating Harris with a narrow 47% lead over Trump’s 46%.
Both recent polls conducted by Cygnal were before Harris and Trump had their debate. However, Buchanan mentioned he doesn’t expect the debate to significantly influence the electoral result. ‘Mainly steadfast supporters watched the debate. Every candidate appealed to their base as expected. Indecisive voters probably only view snippets afterwards,’ he elaborated.
Buchanan observed ‘Trump delivered more and highly effective sound bites, despite the possibility of some of them being intended by the Democrats to hurt him. Harris, on the other hand, produced few memorable lines and certainly fell short on delivering specifics on economic policies substantial to undecided voters.’
Recently, Trump stated he would not engage in a debate with Harris anymore. The debate’s facilitators, ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis, were critiqued by Trump and a segment of conservatives for their apparent predisposition.
The former president was subjected to numerous fact checks by Muir and Davis during the debate. However, it drew attention that despite Kamala Harris making multiple possibly errant statements, the moderators did not proceed with fact-checking her statements.