Kamala Harris is trailing Trump nationwide, but a recent poll shows improvement in Pa.
A lot remains still remains to be seen from the Harris campaign, but the vice president did poll better than Biden in Pa. even before she was the presumptive nominee.
Vice President Kamala Harris was polling better than President Joe Biden in the battleground state of Pennsylvania before Biden ended his reelection campaign and Harris became the presumptive nominee.
However, she has not yet caught up to former President Donald Trump nationwide since she received Biden’s endorsement, according to The New York Times’ average of recent national polls.
The analysis, first published by The New York Times, shows that while there may be some slivers of optimism for Democrats in key states or demographics, time will tell whether Harris as the party’s presumptive nominee — a historic shakeup 100-some days from the election — is swaying voters nationwide.
Harris is currently trailing Trump by 2 percentage points nationally as of Wednesday, 46% to 48%, according to The New York Times’ polling average dashboard.
The Times has been tracking about 185 different polls since Biden withdrew from the race on Sunday, and these individual polls influence the Times’ national average dashboard. Only a handful of polls have been conducted since Sunday and most of them have shown Trump with a one point lead. A CNN/SSRS poll displays a 3-point national lead for Trump, while an Ipsos poll shows Harris with a 2-point lead nationwide.
Harris slightly closed the national polling gap that existed between Biden and Trump. Before ending his reelection bid on Sunday, the president was lagging behind Trump 44% to 47%, according to the Times polling average.
It’s a similar story in Pennsylvania. In a separate poll conducted earlier this month — before the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler County, Pa., and before Biden withdrew from the race, Harris was still behind Trump by a very slim 47% to 48%, but she improved on Biden’s margins, which showed him behind Trump by three percentage points in The New York Times/Siena College’s swing state polls.
Harris was also ahead of Trump by 5 percentage points in Virginia, where Biden was only ahead by three, according to the same poll.
Most Harris v. Trump polls were conducted when a matchup between the two of them was hypothetical, wrote Nate Cohn, Times chief political analyst, on the polling averages dashboard.
In both Pennsylvania and Virginia, Harris performed slightly better than Biden in those early polls with key voter groups, like Black voters, younger voters, and women — demographics where Biden was starting to lose traction, according to The New York Times.
It’s still in the very early days of Harris’ campaign and how she polls against Trump will become clearer in the coming days.
She received Biden’s endorsement on Sunday and officially secured enough Democratic delegates on Tuesday to become the nominee.
Biden’s poor polling numbers were part of the argument made by many Democratic leaders to question the president’s viability in staying in the race against Trump following his lackluster debate performance on June 27.