Vice President Kamala Harris narrows gap against Donald Trump, Times/Siena College poll finds

Vice President Kamala Harris begins a 103-day sprint for the presidency in a virtual tie with former President Donald Trump, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, as her fresh candidacy was quickly reuniting a Democratic Party that had been deeply fractured over President Joe Biden.

Just days after the president abandoned his campaign under pressure from party leaders, the poll showed Democrats rallying behind Harris as the presumptive nominee, with only 14 per cent saying they would prefer another option.

An overwhelming 70 per cent of Democratic voters said they wanted the party to speedily consolidate behind her rather than engage in a more competitive and drawn-out process.

Her swift reassembling of the Democratic coalition appeared to help narrow Trump’s significant advantage over Biden of only a few weeks ago. Harris was receiving 93 per cent support from Democrats, the same share that Trump was getting from Republicans.

Overall, Trump leads Harris 48 per cent to 47 per cent among likely voters in a head-to-head match. That is a marked improvement for Democrats when compared with the Times/Siena poll in early July that showed Biden behind by 6 percentage points, in the aftermath of the poor debate performance that eventually drove him from the race.

Trump leads Harris 48 per cent to 46 per cent among registered voters. He had led among registered voters by nine percentage points over Biden in the post-debate poll.

The survey provides a snapshot of the presidential race in the middle of one of the most volatile and unpredictable periods in modern U.S. history. Democrats suddenly have a new nominee. And, less than two weeks after Trump survived an assassination attempt, his favorability rating rose to the highest level it has ever been in a national New York Times survey.

In some ways, the poll showed a reset to where the race was before Biden imploded on a debate stage in Atlanta: months of a narrow but steady Trump edge in the national polling averages. But in other ways, the new poll provided intriguing hints at how a Harris candidacy could remake the political coalitions and map that will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.

Harris was faring better among groups that Biden had been the weakest in, especially younger voters and non-white voters. At the same time, some Democrats fear she might not retain the same strengths that Biden has had among older voters, for whom the poll does show some erosion of Democratic support.

The poll showed Harris garnering about 60 per cent support from voters younger than 30 and Hispanic voters, groups Biden had consistently struggled with. Among voters younger than 45, Harris was ahead by 10 percentage points, less than three weeks after Trump had held a narrow edge with that group over Biden.

Because the survey was of voters nationwide, the impact of Harris’ candidacy in particular battleground states was not immediately clear. But a Democratic candidate with greater appeal to younger and more diverse voters could put renewed focus on the Sun Belt states of Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, which had been threatening to slip off the swing-state map for Biden.

Harris has emerged as the Democratic Party’s expected nominee after a tumultuous few weeks. Biden stepped aside Sunday, following a month of drawn-out questions about his mental faculties following a poor debate performance at the end of June. In the interim, Trump escaped an assassination attempt, named Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate and formally accepted his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention.

Harris is on a glide path towards next month’s Democratic convention as she seeks to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to serve as a U.S. president.

“Her being president or even being in the running is very important just for history,” said Summer Nesbitt, a 27-year-old school tutor near Detroit who supports the vice president.

But Nesbitt, who is Black, added that she found some of Harris’ explicit appeals to Black voters a turnoff. “I don’t think that you have to try to pretend to be more down or be more Black just so you can get the Black vote. Just be yourself.”

Voters are more tuned into the race. Just before the June debate, 48 per cent of voters said they were paying a lot of attention to the presidential campaign. That figure now stands at 64 per cent, though the interest of independents continues to lag behind that of Democrats and Republicans.

The national mood remains bleak, but noticeably less so, with 61 per cent seeing the country headed in the wrong direction, which is lower than in recent months.

Harris faces some structural challenges as November approaches. She is the sitting vice president at a time when 75 per cent of voters rated the nation’s economic conditions as “fair” or “poor.” And significantly more voters see Trump as a strong leader than those who say the same of Harris.

The country’s view of Harris has also brightened, with her favourable rating rising by 10 percentage points since February. Harris enters the campaign with a favourable rating of 46 per cent, better than Biden’s, but still behind Trump’s.

Views of all three — Trump, Biden and Harris — split dramatically along gender lines. For the most part, men like Trump while women don’t. Women like Biden and Harris, while men don’t.

Trump’s favourable rating ticked up to 48 per cent. This comes not long after the indelible images of him rising to his feet after an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, pumping his fist in the air as blood streaked across his face, shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“Honestly the way he handled it after the fact, the way he pretty much stood up in defiance of what happened, kind of gave me that sense of pride that I hadn’t felt when it came to our country in a while,” said Eddie Otzoy, a 29-year-old contractor in Los Angeles, who had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, but is now backing Trump.

“Once the assassination attempt happened, it made me feel like they wanted to shut him up for a reason.”

Nearly 90 per cent of voters said they approved of Biden’s decision to exit the race, a view shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.

Perhaps as a result, Harris has almost instantly united the party behind her, to a far greater degree than Biden had been able to in the last two years. Nearly 4 in 5 Democrats or voters who lean towards the Democratic Party said they would like to nominate her. In contrast, only 48 per cent of Democrats had said they wanted Biden as the nominee just three weeks ago.

A majority of Democrats said they felt enthusiastic about Harris as the nominee, with only 10 per cent dissatisfied or angry.

“It would be a larger setback for the Democrats if they try to find someone else to try to fill in,” said Michael Newman, a 59-year-old contractor in Arlington, Texas, who is supporting Harris. “She has a pretty good insight on the goals that Biden was working on.”

Biden’s decision not to seek reelection — “I revere this office, but I love my country more,” he said in a national address Wednesday evening — has resulted in a sharp spike in his favourability rating. The 7-point jump in his favourable rating after three of the most brutal weeks of his presidency — as party leaders questioned his mental competence and fitness — suggested that voter frustration with Biden may have been based not just on how he was governing but the fact that the 81-year-old president was seeking a second term.

Biden’s 43 per cent favorability rating was his best showing since 2022.

In a multi-candidate race, less than a single percentage point separated Trump and Harris, with Harris at 44 per cent and Trump at 43 per cent after rounding.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s share of the vote continues to drop, hitting just 5 per cent of likely voters in the new survey. He was the only third-party candidate above 1 per cent.

Among Harris and Trump’s greatest strengths in the poll were that voters saw them as intelligent and having the right temperament to handle the job. Harris gets slightly higher marks for her smarts; 66 per cent of voters say “intelligent” describes her well, compared with 59 per cent for Trump.

Neither candidate holds an edge on the ability to unify the country, a sign that perhaps, in this era of deep political polarization, few believe national unity is even possible.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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