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Kamala Harris Is Closing Her Gap With Trump In 2024 Race

AInvestTuesday, Jul 23, 2024 11:10 am ET
1min read

President Biden's decision to forgo re-election in 2024 and to support Kamala Harris as his successor has had a direct impact on the election campaign. According to the latest poll from Morning Consult, this is the first major survey following Biden's announcement of his withdrawal from the race on Sunday. The poll shows that Harris (45%) trails Trump by two percentage points (47%), an improvement from the 6-point gap Biden faced before exiting the race.

There is reason to believe that putting Harris's name forward for the election could help the Democrats win the presidency. Recent polls show that she fares better against Trump than Biden does. 

The Democrats have indeed acted on this: The Democratic presidential candidate selection seems to be settled, with Biden's running mate Harris reportedly having secured enough delegate pledge votes to secure the Democratic presidential nomination. Unofficial tallies indicate that Harris had garnered support from 2,668 delegates by Monday evening, far exceeding the required 1,976 votes, thus cementing her status as the presidential candidate.

For several months, polls pitting Harris against Trump showed her trailing by a few percentage points more than Biden. This includes a Morning Consult poll of battleground states, where Harris was seven points behind Trump, while Biden was four points behind.

This began to change after Biden's poor performance in the end-of-June debate, and by early July, Harris was polling higher than Biden in head-to-head matchups against Trump - by Sunday, she was 1.6 percentage points ahead of Biden in the RealClearPolitics average.

Meanwhile, Trump's poll bounce following last week's Republican National Convention put him ahead of Biden in the FiveThirtyEight average, marking his largest lead. However, the emergence of a 59-year-old multiracial candidate might encourage some voters who were on the fence - particularly young voters, women, and minorities. Reports indicate that over 40,000 African American women have rallied to support Kamala Harris.

Spencer Kimball, a polling expert at Emerson College, said, This could change the campaign because it does have some historical significance that you can't capture in a hypothetical situation. And now that we're seeing it for real, it could move the needle.

Kimball noted that some Democrats might have been reluctant to say they supported Harris while Biden was the presumptive nominee. These voters can now openly express their unequivocal support for Harris. No other prominent Democrat has indicated that they will challenge her for the Democratic nomination before the Democratic National Convention in August.

Harris's rise could be fleeting. The divide among voters is narrow, and even seismic events like Biden's debate performance, assassination attempts on Trump, and the Republican National Convention have only moved the average poll numbers by three percentage points.

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