Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party in the 2024 election, fares better in polling against GOP contender Donald Trump than President Joe Biden did.
Whether due to the polling, Harris’s massive fundraising haul this week, or other factors, Trump and his campaign team appear to be frantic in wake of the announcement that Harris will be his main opponent in the race.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll published on Monday, Harris and Trump are in a statistical tie, with the Democratic nominee garnering 47 percent of the vote and the Republican getting 49 percent — a spread that’s within the 2.8-point margin of error.
The poll suggests that Democrats were wise to pressure Biden to drop out of the race — the same survey shows Trump leading the president by 3 points, outside that margin of error.
Harris still has work to do, however, when it comes to competing against all candidates who are running: When put up against Trump and third-party options (like Robert Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, Jill Stein and others), Harris loses to Trump by about 4 points, the poll found. Still, she’s faring better than Biden would be: When put up against Trump and those other candidates, Biden is down by 5 points.
Harris’s campaign has other reasons for her to be optimistic: Although the poll appears to show Trump ahead of her, it was conducted after the Republican National Convention, which is generally followed by a bump in polling numbers for the party’s nominee. Trump also survived an attempt on his life just over a week ago, and is likely still garnering some positive numbers as a result of that event.
Indeed, compared to a Quinnipiac University poll from about two months ago, Trump is seeing some better favorability numbers. In May, he had a net -13 point favorability rating, while this week, his rating is at just -3 points.
Despite these bumps, Harris still comes very close to Trump in the latest poll. The data was also mostly collected before Biden announced that he was dropping out of the race and endorsed Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll, published on Tuesday, also shows good news for Harris. The first major poll released since Biden dropped out and Harris assumed de facto nominee status, the survey of U.S. voters shows her leading Trump with 44 percent support to 42 percent in a head-to-head matchup, within the poll’s margin of error. The poll also finds that Harris is leading Trump outside of the margin of error by four points when third-party candidates are included.
Harris is now considered to be the presumptive nominee for the party, as she has attained enough public endorsements from Biden’s now-released delegates that he earned during the primary election season. Harris needs to attain 1,976 delegates to be the party’s nominee. As of Tuesday morning, she has received well over that number, garnering support from 2,887 delegates.
Trump doesn’t appear to be taking the news of Harris becoming the nominee very well. According to an ABC News analysis of his social media posts, Trump and his campaign are “scrambling” after Biden’s departure, apparently caught completely off-guard and unprepared to deal with Harris now being his main opponent in the presidential election.
Trump’s focus in those posts has largely still been on Biden, barely mentioning Harris in the first few days following the president’s announcement. Trump has falsely claimed that Biden didn’t really have COVID-19 the weekend before he announced he’d no longer be running, and complained that the Republican Party should be reimbursed for having to campaign against a candidate who is no longer running.
Trump is also promoting a false narrative that Democrats “stole” the race from Biden — even though the candidate, amid pressure, voluntarily stepped down and has voiced support for his vice president to assume his role as the Democratic nominee.
The former president’s rants have included demands for the upcoming scheduled debate to be hosted by a more Trump-friendly — and less accessible — cable channel, rather than a broadcast network.
“Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, has quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on Fox News, rather than very biased ABC,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
There’s no reason for a venue change, as Trump seemed willing to continue with the debate as scheduled prior to Biden’s departure from the race. His post prompted many pundits to speculate that he is afraid to debate Harris.
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