Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are locked into a tight race in key swing states, according to new polling from the Cook Political Report and the bipartisan team of BSG and GS Strategy Group published Wednesday.
The surveys, conducted between July 26 and August 2, show Harris leading slightly or tied among likely voters in six of the seven battlegrounds polled -- Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump was ahead by a slim margin in Nevada. This is a marked change from the same surveys in May that showed Trump leading by a solid margin or tied across all seven swing states.
The reversal in North Carolina is particularly stark. Trump held one of his largest leads there in May, and the candidates are now neck-and-neck.
The new surveys also suggest that third-party candidates may be less of a factor. The inclusion of candidates such as Robert F Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate, and Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, did not change the overall results across the key states.
The results are similar to recent New York Times/Siena College surveys showing Harris with a slight lead in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and another indicator of how the presidential race has been remade in just a few weeks.
The Cook surveys, taken shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and backed Harris as his successor, show Harris' favorability ratings jumped 13 percentage points as voters got to know her as the new Democratic Party nominee. Much of that growth was driven by Democrats, but Harris also made gains with men who identify as independent, though the group still views her more negatively than positively, on balance.
There is some good news for Trump. Undecided voters, a relatively small slice of the electorate, trust Trump more on economic policy and border security and are more inflation-conscious than the electorate overall.
They are also more worried about Harris' readiness to perform the job than they are concerned about Trump's age. If elected, Trump, 78, would be the oldest president ever inaugurated.