WASHINGTON: A new poll on Sunday showed Kamala Harris – who is expected to name her vice-presidential pick soon – tied with Donald Trump, upending a White House race the Republican had increasingly believed he would win.
With the Nov. 5 election fast approaching, Harris erased the growing lead Trump had been building before President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid.
According to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, Harris has a 1 percent lead over Trump nationally — compared to Trump's previous five-point lead over Biden.
In the swing states that decide the Electoral College contest in the US election, Harris and Trump – who shocked the world with his presidential victory in 2016 but was defeated by Biden in 2020 – are tied.
Those are considered good numbers for the Democratic nominee, who only parachuted into the race last month when Biden bowed to growing concerns about his mental acuity and ability, at age 81, to serve a second term.
Harris, who is Biden's vice president and the first ever black and South Asian woman in the role, is in a sprint to define herself to voters before Trump does.
A big moment in the process will be when Harris announces her choice of running mate in a historic bid to become America's first female president.
“It's her first big decision as a manager, so that tells you about her thought process,” Amy Walter, a polling expert at the Cook Political Report, told CBS News.
The CBS poll, which echoes a number of other polls indicating rapid gains for Harris, shows that Trump is still favored by voters on the key issue of the economy.
Only 25 percent said they expected to be better off financially if Harris won, compared to 45 percent who said that about Trump.
But when it comes to confidence in the candidates' temperaments, the poll shows voters prefer the former California prosecutor to Trump, a convicted felon who has made a career out of publicly insulting those who oppose him — including when he was president.
A cognitive health problem that previously plagued Biden is now a problem for the 78-year-old Trump, the survey found. Only 51 percent of respondents thought Trump was mentally fit for the presidency, compared to 64 percent for Harris.
Democrats believe that if you “make this a referendum on Trump rather than a referendum on the current state of the economy, then we have a real opportunity to win,” Cook said.
Trump was on a political high last month after surviving an assassination attempt on a rally and then using the Republican convention to emphasize his image of toughness against a physically frail Biden.
But with Biden's dramatic departure and Harris' jump start, they're trying to recalibrate.
At a rally in Georgia on Saturday, Trump called Harris a “Marxist” and a “radical left-wing freak” and claimed she would cause an “economic crash.” On Wednesday, he shocked many when he told an audience of black journalists that Harris had “turned black” out of political expediency.
Where Biden often attacked Trump as a threat to democracy, given his unprecedented refusal to accept his loss in 2020, Harris' team honed a sharper — more meme-friendly — line built around calling Trump and his vice-presidential pick JD Vance “weird.” .
On Saturday, the Harris campaign said Trump was “afraid” to debate her after rejecting a previously scheduled televised debate on ABC, while also saying he would be open to debating her on Fox News, the network that has supported him for years. .
Who will he choose as his passenger?
All roads to the White House lead through a handful of swing states, and Harris will begin her five-day run Tuesday in the biggest — Pennsylvania — as she builds momentum for her Nov. 5 showdown with Republican Donald Trump.
Harris is expected to pick a white man to balance the ticket — and likely a moderate Democrat to help offset Republican attacks on Harris for being too left.
The three figures considered to be leading the short list — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona — all visited Harris in Washington on Sunday, The Washington Post reported.
“At this moment we are faced with a choice between two visions of our nation: one focused on the future and the other on the past… This campaign is about people coming together, driven by love of country, to fight for the best. who we are,” she wrote on X.
Fresh from securing enough delegate votes to secure the Democratic nomination, the nation's first female, black and South Asian vice president will head to the national convention in Chicago in two weeks in complete control of her party.
In a campaign barely two weeks old, the 59-year-old former prosecutor has obliterated fundraising records, drawn huge crowds and dominated social media on her way to erase the electoral lead Trump built before President Joe Biden left the race.
Next on the agenda is the vice presidential race, with an announcement expected any time before she runs alongside a mystery candidate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city, on Tuesday night.
The Keystone State is the most prized real estate among the hotly contested battlegrounds that decide the Electoral College system.
It's part of the “blue wall” that carried Biden to the White House in 2020, along with Michigan and Wisconsin — two states where Harris is favored because of Wednesday's crowds.
Pennsylvania is governed by Shapiro, a 51-year-old Democrat, a front-runner in the so-called “veepstakes” shortlist.
Later in the week, Harris will tour the more racially diverse Sun Belt and southern states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina, where he will try to shore up black and Hispanic votes that have been chipping away at Democrats.
Just a month ago, Trump was in cruise control as he opened up a significant lead in swing state polls after Biden's dismal debate performance, with the Republican mogul keeping the country in limbo over his own vice presidential pick.
Trump's White House bid was altered on July 21 when the 81-year-old Biden, facing growing concerns about his age and lagging poll numbers, dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris.
Energetic and two decades younger than the 78-year-old Trump, the vice president got off to a fast start, raising $310 million in July — more than double Trump's haul — according to her campaign.
While Biden strongly appealed for a return to civility and the preservation of democracy, Harris focused on the future and made the hard-fought “liberties” of voters the touchstone of her campaign.
She and her allies have also been more aggressive than the Biden camp — mocking Trump for breaking his Sept. 10 debate commitment and characterizing the convicted felon as an elderly crook and “weird.”
While she has distanced herself from some of the left-wing positions she took during her ill-fated 2020 primary campaign, Harris has not given a wide-ranging interview since entering the race, and rally-goers will be looking for more details about her plans for 2020. country.
Meanwhile, Trump and his fellow Republicans have been scrambling to adjust to their new adversary or refine their attacks against Harris — first conveying that she is dangerously liberal on immigration and crime before suggesting she is lying about being black.
