Kamala Harris narrows gap with Donald Trump in polls after Joe Biden's exit

By Gregory Korte

The polling is in, and Kamala Harris has narrowed the gap with Donald Trump.

Taken together, seven national polls taken since Harris launched her presidential bid Sunday after Joe Biden’s exit from the race have cut the Democrats’ deficit about in half. Some closely watched polls — including a Wall Street Journal poll on Friday — have her in a statistical tie with the former president.

A New York Times/Siena poll on Thursday found that Harris had closed the gap by 6 or 7 percentage points, depending on whether third parties are included.

Harris’ gain comes largely from parts of the Democratic coalition that had soured on Biden. While the 81-year-old president was winning just 59 per cent of Black registered voters in the New York Times poll a month ago, Harris is at 69 per cent. She’s also increased her party’s share of Hispanic voters to 57 per cent from 45 per cent, and voters under 30 to 56 per cent from 46 per cent.

The Wall Street Journal poll found similar shifts, accounting for a surge in Democratic enthusiasm. While only 37 per cent of Biden voters were enthusiastic about his candidacy less than a month ago, now 81 per cent of Harris voters said they were enthusiastic.

Much has also changed for Trump, who officially became the GOP nominee at last week’s convention, over the past month of polling. His favorability rating has increased since the failed assassination attempt on July 13, but the post-convention “bounce” that candidates have come to expect after accepting their party’s nomination was overshadowed by Biden’s decision to step out of the race.

The Trump campaign has sought to downplay the shift, warning supporters in a memo Tuesday that Democrats would get a “Harris Honeymoon” in the polls.

“Obviously, the situation we find ourselves in today is totally uncharted territory and has no modern historical parallel,” Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio wrote in a “confidential memo” that the campaign quickly sent out as a press release. “There is no question that Harris will get her bump earlier than the Democrat’s Convention. And that bump is likely to start showing itself over the next few days and will last a while until the race settles back down.”

The major polling averages from RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight can be slow to react to news as fresh polls gradually come in and replace older ones in the sample.

An unweighted average of only polls conducted after Biden left the race shows Harris trailing Trump by 1.6 percentage points. Excluding a poll from Rasmussen Reports — consistently the most Trump-leaning one in the RealClearPolitics sample — and Trump’s lead shrinks to about half that.

A smattering of surveys in swing states shows a similar trend. Emerson College polls in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin show Harris polling 3 to 4 percentage points higher than Biden did in the Emerson’s last poll just a week earlier.