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In the week since President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, the internet has been flooded with memes declaring Vice President Kamala Harris “brat.” Aside from baffling everyone not chronically online, the now-inescapable memes could prove to be a double-edged sword for Harris’s candidacy.

The meme itself refers to Brat, Charli XCX’s new album released in early June. The pop music singer herself fueled the furor for Harris Monday by tweeting, “kamala is brat.”

One week ago, Republicans were partying. The raucous scenes at Milwaukee’s Republican National Convention reflected two victories. One was Donald Trump’s now total and complete takeover of the GOP. The other was his upcoming victory in the 2024 presidential election. Sure, voters were still months away from heading to the polls. But with 81-year-old President Joe Biden topping the Democratic ticket, how could he lose?

Trump and his supporters found out how on Sunday. Biden stepped aside and quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement. Harris, a 59-year-old former prosecutor, can, unlike Biden, put up a fight. What looked like a cakewalk suddenly became a real campaign. And that campaign now had a huge vulnerability: J.D. Vance, who Trump had selected as his running mate just a week earlier. Arguably the most extreme candidate Trump could have chosen, Vance is also a neophyte: 39 years old, he has served less than two years in the Senate and otherwise has no experience in government. In the new race in which Republicans found themselves, Vance not only worsened everything, he exacerbated Trump’s biggest weaknesses: his own radicalism, particularly on abortion, and his status as the oldest presidential nominee in American history.

Harrisburg, Pa., July 26, 2024—Public support for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is evenly divided in Pennsylvania, according to a new statewide survey of Pennsylvania voters, with Harris leading Trump 47% to 46% in a head-to-head ballot matchup.

When other candidates are added, Harris and Trump each garner 44% support, with independent Robert F. Kennedy at 6%, Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 1%, and Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver at 1%.

A new poll out of Michigan shows Kamala Harris and Donald Trump tied in the all-important battleground state with just over 100 days to go before Election Day.

According to the Detroit News-WDIV-TV poll conducted after Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris jumped in, Harris and Trump are tied at 41 percent each among likely general election voters.

A Democrat has won the presidential race in Minnesota every cycle since 1976 and Vice President Kamala Harris is favorably positioned to extend this streak in 2024, as she currently has a 6-point advantage over former President Donald Trump in a Fox News survey released Friday.

A majority of voters support Harris in a head-to-head matchup against Trump, 52% to 46%, nearly matching the 2020 vote (52.40% Biden, 45.28% Trump). These results sit right at the margin of sampling error.

Wisconsin has long been a competitive state in presidential politics.

The state for years has produced razor-thin results, and it is poised to do so again in November.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has gained ground against Republican Donald Trump in six of the seven swing states since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of registered voters published on Tuesday.

The poll - conducted online from July 24-28 - shows Harris leading Trump in Michigan by 11 percentage points, while in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, she has a 2-point advantage. Trump is ahead of Harris in Pennsylvania by 4 points and in North Carolina by 2 points. They are on equal footing in Georgia.

A key question is looming for Vice President Kamala Harris as she edges closer to gaining the Democratic presidential nomination: Can she turn the Biden-Harris economic record into a political advantage in a way that President Joe Biden failed to do? In some ways, her task would seem straightforward: The administration oversaw a vigorous rebound from the pandemic recession, one that shrank the U.S. unemployment rate to a half-century low of 3.4% in early 2023 — far below the painful 6.4% rate when Biden and Harris took office in 2021. The rate stayed below 4% for more than two years, the longest such stretch since the 1960s. Boosted by the administration’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, robust economic growth sent demand for workers soaring, forcing employers to jack up wages. Paychecks rose particularly fast for lower-paid workers, thereby narrowing income inequality. Soon, though, clogged supply chains caused parts shortages, as demand for furniture, cars, and other goods, juiced by the administration’s stimulus, soared. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine escalated gas and food prices. In June 2022, inflation reached a four-decade high. The spike in prices was so severe that it offset most of the wage growth that workers had enjoyed. And it soured Americans on the economy. Consumer sentiment plunged in late 2021 and has barely recovered even as inflation has plummeted from 9.1% in 2022 to 3%. A wide gap has opened up between the public’s dim view of the economy and the generally positive data on jobs, falling inflation and economic growth. Chris Jackson, head of polling at Ipsos Public Affairs, said he blames the cumulative jump in average prices over the past three years — roughly 20%, only partly offset by higher paychecks — and a general unease about the country’s direction. “People are, generally speaking, doing OK,” Jackson said. “They have their jobs, they’re getting paid, they’ve seen pay raises — all those sort of things. And yet they don’t feel like their dollars go as far. They feel like the country is not going in a good direction, just in general.” Former President Donald Trump is campaigning hard on the higher cost of living, having mentioned inflation 14 times in his speech last week at the Republican National Convention. His running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has attacked Biden over the surge in housing costs, which has diminished the hopes of many would-be home buyers. Speaking this week in Indianapolis, Harris highlighted her support for “affordable health care” and “affordable child care.” She also charged that Trump would eliminate the Biden administration’s price cap on insulin, which the White House often cites as an example of its efforts to reduce high drug costs. Even though inflation — the rate of price increases — has sharply slowed over the past two years, Americans remain unhappy that average prices are much higher than they were just a few years ago. Grocery prices are up 21% since Biden and Harris took office.h Average apartment rents have climbed about 23%, to $1,411 a month, according to Apartment List. And to fight inflation, the Federal Reserve, led by Chair Jerome Powell, raised its key interest rate at the fastest pace in four decades. Borrowing costs soared as a result. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has more than doubled, from a low of about 2.7% during the pandemic to about 6.8% last week. The combined increase in prices and inflation has been particularly jarring for many families because it followed nearly a decade of little-to-no inflation and ultra-low interest rates. America’s households grew used to prices barely rising. From 2015 until the pandemic, for example, U.S. food prices were basically flat. When high inflation eventually did strike, it both bruised Americans’ finances and darkened their economic outlook. Still, many leading policymakers see the Fed’s sharp boost in interest rates, and the subsequent fall in inflation, as an economic success story. When the Fed began aggressively raising rates, making consumer and business loans much costlier, the widespread fear was that the United States would soon tumble into a recession. In August 2022, Powell issued a high-profile warning that the Fed’s inflation fight would “bring some pain to households and businesses.” Instead, inflation has fallen without a sharp rise in unemployment, which is at a still-low 4.1%. And Fed officials have indicated that they’re increasingly confident that inflation is declining steadily toward their 2% target. Christopher Waller, an influential member of the Fed’s governing board, celebrated that progress in remarks last week. “We’ve never really seen this in terms of a severe policy tightening,” Waller said, referring to the Fed’s rate hikes. “The economy just kind of held its ground. And inflation came down a lot. This has been an amazing recovery from what happened in ’21 and ’22.” Yet many everyday Americans aren’t sharing in the enthusiasm as they grapple with still-high costs. New car prices, for example, jumped 24% in the three years after the pandemic, to an average of $48,000. They have largely leveled off in the past year, according to government data. But on Thursday, General Motors said that customers paid an average of nearly $50,000 for one of its new cars in the April to June quarter. Perhaps most painfully, housing affordability has worsened. Both prices and mortgage rates are much higher than they were three years ago. The monthly payment for a newly purchased median-priced home has jumped nearly one-third in that time, to more than $3,000, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Would-be homebuyers need to earn at least $100,000 to afford the median-priced home in nearly half of all metro areas, the center has found. Abigail Wozniak, director of the Opportunity and Growth Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said the burden of such major purchases becomes harder to manage when overall prices spike. “It’s difficult to change your consumption” of cars and homes “in little amounts quickly,” Wozniak said. “You’re forced to think about this big budget choice of, should I give up a car and substitute into transit? That’s a huge adjustment. And adjustments are painful.” Then there are groceries. A pound of ground beef has jumped $1.05 since Biden’s inauguration, to a national average of $5.36 a pound, according to government data. Though egg prices are far below the peak they reached during a bout of avian flu in late 2022, at $2.72 a dozen they’re still 85% more expensive than they were three years ago. A pound of chicken has surged 25% to $2.01 since January 2021. Economists at the Biden administration have calculated, though, that average wages have risen enough to make up for the higher costs. As of June, average hourly pay was 23% higher than it was four years earlier — larger than the 21% jump in average prices. As a result, the White House economists calculated, it now takes about 3.6 hours of work for a typical employee to buy a week’s worth of groceries, about the same as it did before the pandemic. Economists say this is how it’s supposed to work: After an inflationary burst, prices won’t fall back to their previous levels. Such sustained price drops typically occur only during recessions. In a healthy economy, wages eventually rise enough for consumers to afford the higher costs. By some measures, lower-income workers have fared particularly well, a result of the difficulty employers faced after the pandemic in filling many in-person jobs. Wages for restaurant and hotel workers soared nearly 15% in the spring of 2022 from a year earlier — much faster than the inflation rate. Yet overall household income hasn’t grown as fast as hourly pay. That can happen if fewer people in a household work or if their hours are cut. Economists at Motio Research have calculated that since Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, inflation-adjusted median household incomes have risen just 1.6% to $79,000. (The median represents a midpoint and filters out extremely high or low numbers that can skew averages.) “So if half of the population, at least, see their income stagnating for four years, you can understand why inflation is being identified as a huge problem here,” said Matias Scaglione, a co-founder of Motio.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden might not often use the word “abortion” when he talks about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but Vice President Kamala Harris sure does. She’s also toured a Minnesota Planned Parenthood clinic where the procedure is performed and routinely links the fall of Roe to the larger issue of rising maternal mortality nationwide. Now that Harris is running for president in place of Biden, Democrats and advocates for reproductive rights are hoping that her bluntness on abortion — coupled with the administration’s policies — will help sway voters to deliver them not just the White House but key congressional seats as well. “The president on the record was fabulous and the campaign was turning out multiple repro-focused ads a week, and had an army of surrogates,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All. “But, you know, nothing is more compelling than the top of the ticket being the most compelling on the issue, and that’s what we have now.” In her first rally as a candidate on Tuesday, Harris touched on the issue of abortion briefly. But she’s expected to make it a major feature of the campaign going forward, as she works to draw a stark contrast between herself and Republican Donald Trump. She’s eager to portray herself as a direct and consistent advocate with a history of fighting for reproductive health issues, especially Black maternal health. “We who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump’s extreme abortion bans, because we trust women to make decisions about their own bodies and not have their government tell them what to do,” she said to loud cheers at a Wisconsin rally. The Supreme Court on June 24, 2022, overturned abortion rights that had been in place since 1973. Since then, roughly half the states have put some sort of ban in place. The consequences of these bans go far beyond restricting access for those who wish to end unwanted pregnancies. And generally, the states with the most restrictions also have the worst rates of maternal mortality. Trump has repeatedly taken credit for the overturning of the federally guaranteed right to abortion. He nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe. But he has publicly resisted supporting a national abortion ban. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has said he adheres to Trump’s views. But in 2022, when he was running for the Senate in Ohio, Vance said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” Dr. Jamila Perritt, leader of the nonpartisan group Physicians for Reproductive Health, laid out a bleak landscape for women today that she hopes will change. “The destruction of the health care safety net, assaults on bodily autonomy, and the rising maternal mortality rate clearly show us that pregnant people and those with the capacity for pregnancy do not have access to the options they need to stay safe and healthy,” she said, adding that it’s worse for Black women who must navigate racism on top of worsening healthcare. “We need bold solutions to combat these crises on multiple fronts,” she said. Even before dropping out of the race, Biden had made Harris his chief messenger on the issue. In the days following the overturning of Roe, the vice president met with lawmakers in conservative states to discuss how to protect abortion rights in the ruling’s aftermath. They convened meetings at the White House. Earlier this year, she did a reproductive rights tour in battleground states, starting in Wisconsin. She was the first vice president to tour an abortion clinic. Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, has said reproductive freedom is an “everyone” issue, not a “women’s” issue. On Tuesday, in his first public appearance since his wife started pursuing the top slot on the ticket, he visited an abortion clinic. “We’ve seen the stories of women who had to literally be on death’s door before they got treatment. It’s barbaric, it’s immoral and it must change,” Emhoff said. The president’s personal views have evolved over his 50 years in public service, but the 81-year-old Catholic has always been more comfortable leaving the blunt talk to his vice president. On the policy side, Biden has sought to make medication abortion more available, access to contraception easier, and his administration has gone before the Supreme Court to argue hospitals have a duty under federal law to perform the procedure in life-threatening situations even in states where abortion is now banned. Biden also has said the Hyde Amendment should be eliminated. Among other things, the amendment bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion. But when the president had the opportunity to hit Trump on the issue during their June 27 debate, Biden faltered, giving jumbled and even nonsensical responses, and he failed to check Trump’s false claims about Democrats’ views on the subject. That debate set his undoing in motion. Harris’ views have been consistent, from her time in the U.S. Senate and as attorney general in California. She links the issue of abortion to the larger problems in the U.S. with maternal mortality and morbidity — plainly discussing how Black women are at a significantly greater risk for complications and less likely to be believed when something goes wrong. As senator, she advocated for maternal health legislation. In 2019, she sponsored the Maternal CARE Act, calling for grants addressing implicit bias in maternal health care. In 2020, she introduced a law aimed at addressing maternal health outcomes with a focus on Black maternal health. She’s also co-sponsored bills addressing birth control access and funding care for uterine fibroids. During her time as California’s attorney general, Harris also sued an anti-abortion group that secretly recorded videos of abortion providers. Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said Harris is poised to become among the most, if not the most, pro-abortion-rights candidates ever nominated by a major political party. “If Harris prevails, it may have a big impact on how we address abortion rights because it’ll show that a more unapologetic, full-throated embrace of reproductive rights can lead you to win politically and overcome other political obstacles,” said Ziegler, one of the nation’s leading abortion rights scholars. Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and co-executive director of the national abortion rights organization WeTestify, said Harris’ identity as a Black and South Asian woman uniquely positions her to speak more personally about how abortion bans disproportionately impact women of color. She said it “means something for all of us” when people of color speak thoughtfully and unapologetically. She added: “I’m looking forward to working with someone who we don’t have to beg to use the word ‘abortion.'”

Vice President Kamala Harris has surpassed former president Donald Trump in seven battleground states, according to a new survey, demonstrating voters’ newfound enthusiasm for the presumptive Democratic nominee in contrast with President Joe Biden’s poor polling numbers prior to his withdrawal from the race. A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey, completed on Sunday and released on Tuesday, shows 48 percent of registered voters backing Harris and 47 percent supporting Trump, signaling a tight race between the two candidates leading up to November. The slight lead that Harris pulled since Biden’s exit last week remains within the poll’s statistical margin of error of one percentage point. The latest findings mark a notable shift from the same pollster’s last survey, conducted in early July, that showed Trump leading Biden by two points overall. Trump was also seen leading the incumbent in five of seven battleground states. Following his faltering debate performance last month, Biden was facing numerous calls within his own party to end his reelection bid. Despite repeatedly saying he would stay in the race, the 81-year-old president stepped down on July 21 and subsequently endorsed his closest colleague. In Tuesday’s poll, Harris is leading her Republican rival by eleven points in Michigan and two points each in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Trump maintains a four-point lead in Pennsylvania and a two-point lead in North Carolina. Meanwhile, the two are tied in Georgia. The margins of error for each state vary between three and five percentage points. The poll surveyed 4,973 voters across all seven swing states between July 24 and 28, days after Harris rose to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Harris quickly gained momentum as the newly appointed presumptive Democratic nominee, winning enough support from party delegates to secure the nomination in August and raising more than $200 million in her presidential campaign’s first week. Now that the election is between Harris and Trump, one-third of voters say they’re much more likely to vote than they were when Biden was the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee. That sentiment increased greatly among black and Hispanic voters, with almost two-thirds of the former demographic saying they’re somewhat or much more likely to cast ballots in November. “Harris’ switch to the top of the ticket appears to have excited her base,” said Alexander Podkul, senior director of research science at Morning Consult. Respondents weighed in on how top election issues inform their perceptions of the two candidates. The majority of voters trust Trump to handle immigration: He had a 16-point lead over Harris in this area. Regarding voters’ beliefs on who can handle the economy better, Trump led his Democratic opponent by eight points. A share of swing-state Democrats also gave their impressions of Harris’s potential running mates, naming Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, and Arizona senator Mark Kelly as the three most favorable contenders. Harris is expected to announce her running mate by next Tuesday, when she will hold her first rally with her pick in Philadelphia, Politico reported. From there, the pair will embark on a four-day tour of several battleground states. Their remaining campaign stops will be western Wisconsin, Detroit, Raleigh, Savannah, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. Other polls show Trump outperforming Harris nationally by a RealClearPolitics average of two points, with most of the top pollsters showing the Republican nominee besting the Democratic candidate in a five-way matchup.

Former President Donald Trump has a narrow edge over Vice President Kamala Harris in four of the five crucial swing states President Joe Biden won in 2020, according to new polls by Emerson College—results similar to national polling that shows Trump beating Harris, but by fewer points than he would Biden. Michigan: Trump leads Harris by one point here (46% to 45%), with 9% of voters undecided, according to an Emerson College survey of 800 registered voters (margin of error 3.4) conducted July 22-23—a slight decline from Trump’s three-point lead against Biden in a July 15-16 Emerson poll. Wisconsin: Harris and Trump are tied here at 47%, with 5% undecided, according to Emerson’s poll of 845 registered voters (margin of error 3.3); Trump led Biden here by five points. Georgia: Trump is up by two points in the state (48% to 46%), with 7% undecided, in an Emerson poll of 800 registered voters (margin of error 3.4), after leading Biden by six points in the group’s previous poll. Arizona: Harris is down by five points (49% to 44%) among the 800 registered voters surveyed (margin of error 3.4), with 7% of voters undecided, while Trump led Biden here by seven points earlier this month. Pennsylvania: Trump leads by two (48% to 46%) in the latest survey of 850 voters (margin of error 3.3), compared to his five-point lead over Biden. Several names on Harris’ reported shortlist for vice president could help her shore up votes in the crucial swing states. Voters are partial to possible contenders who currently represent their states, the Emerson poll found. In Arizona, 42% of Democratic voters prefer their senator, Mark Kelly, 57% of Democrats in Pennsylvania prefer Gov. Josh Shapiro, and 36% of Michigan Democrats surveyed prefer Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has said she wouldn’t accept an offer for the No. 2 spot. None of the possible picks Emerson asked about received more than about 20% support among Democrats in Wisconsin and Georgia, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in addition to Kelly, Shapiro and Whitmer. Biden dropped out of the race Sunday, despite insisting he would continue his campaign amid an intraparty revolt in the wake of his June 27 debate performance. He immediately endorsed Harris and she announced plans to seek the nomination. By Monday, the majority of Biden’s delegates had pledged to support her, making it all but certain she officially becomes the Democratic nominee when they vote during the first week of August to formalize the ticket. Harris enters the race with a relatively low approval rating, below 40% in most polls, largely reflective of Biden’s, and has less than four months to familiarize voters with herself before the general election on Nov. 5. Trump leads Harris by three or fewer points in four national surveys taken since Sunday, but trails Harris by two points in a fifth poll. 2.1. That’s how many points Trump leads Harris by nationally, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average. Biden trailed Trump by 3.1 points when he dropped out of the race Sunday, a 1.6-point polling bump for Trump since the debate.

Former President Donald Trump shared a slew of videos online attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, after a favorability poll aired on Fox News found she was leading him in a few key swing states.

The new poll, conducted July 22–24 and released Sunday, found that Harris’s approval rating had surpassed Trump’s in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Michigan. In Michigan, Harris was leading Trump in favorability by a whopping 57 percent to 47 percent.

Topline Former President Donald Trump has lost his swing state lead since Vice President Kamala Harris joined the race, according to a new Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll that found Trump ahead in just two of seven battlegrounds that will decide the election.

Key Facts:

A new poll has shown that former President Donald Trump is once again way behind Vice President Kamala Harris in terms of support from Black voters in the 2024 election.

An Angus Reid Institute survey of 1,743 registered voters, conducted between July 23 and 25, shows that Harris, the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee, is 2 points ahead of the former president (44 percent to 42) with just over three months until November's election.

Allan Lichtman, the presidential election prognosticator who has successfully predicted the last nine out of 10 White House races, has made his preliminary projection for the November contest: Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to win, he said Friday.

Lichtman said his final prediction for the White House contest will come in August after the Democratic National Convention, but as of Friday, Harris appears to be the winner based on the formula he uses to forecast the election outcome.

July 23 (Reuters) - (This July 23 story has been corrected to remove imprecise language around margin of error in paragraph 16) Vice President Kamala Harris opened up a marginal two-percentage-point lead over Republican Donald Trump after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and passed the torch to her, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. That compares with a marginal two-point deficit Biden faced against Trump in last week's poll before his Sunday exit from the race. The new poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, followed both the Republican National Convention where Trump on Thursday formally accepted the nomination and Biden's announcement on Sunday he was leaving the race and endorsing Harris. Harris, whose campaign says she has secured the Democratic nomination, led Trump 44% to 42% in the national poll, a difference within the 3-percentage-point margin of error. Harris and Trump were tied at 44% in a July 15-16 poll, and Trump led by one percentage point in a July 1-2 poll, both within the same margin of error. While nationwide surveys give important signals of American support for political candidates, a handful of competitive states typically tilt the balance in the U.S. Electoral College, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election. A pollster with Trump's campaign played down any polling showing an increase in Harris' support, arguing that she was likely to see a temporary rise in popularity because of widespread media coverage of her new candidacy. "That bump is likely to start showing itself over the next few days and will last for a while," pollster Tony Fabrizio said in a memo circulated to reporters by Trump's campaign. Candidates often expect a bump after formally accepting their party's nomination at stage-managed, televised conventions such as the one that Trump had last week. But the poll showed no sign of that. Bump or not, the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll underscored the rationale for Biden dropping out of the race and for Harris replacing him on the ticket. HARRIS SEEN AS SHARPER THAN BIDEN, TRUMP Some 56% of registered voters agreed with a statement that Harris, 59, was "mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges," compared to 49% who said the same of Trump, 78. Only 22% of voters assessed Biden that way. Biden, 81, ended his reelection effort after a debate with Trump in which he often stammered and failed to aggressively challenge attacks by Trump that included falsehoods. Some 80% of Democratic voters said they viewed Biden favorably, compared to 91% who said the same of Harris. Three quarters of Democratic voters said they agreed with a statement that the party and voters should get behind Harris now, with only a quarter saying multiple candidates should compete for the party's nomination. When voters in the survey were shown a hypothetical ballot that included independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Harris led Trump 42% to 38%. Kennedy, favored by 8% of voters in the poll, has yet to qualify for the ballot in many states ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Harris campaigned in the critical battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday. She won support from major party figures and attention has since turned to who she will pick as her running mate. Many respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they knew nothing about the Democrats seen as potential picks to join Harris' ticket. About one in four registered voters said they had never heard of U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a former Democratic presidential candidate who had the highest favorability rating - 37% - of the potential Harris running mates in the poll. One in three had not heard of California Governor Gavin Newsom, with about the same share saying they looked on him favorably. Half of registered voters in the poll had never heard of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and two thirds knew nothing of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. The poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 1,241 U.S. adults nationwide, including 1,018 registered voters.

WASHINGTON, July 30 (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris held a marginal one-percentage-point lead over Republican Donald Trump in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, closing the gap that opened in the final weeks of President Joe Biden's reelection bid. The three-day poll, completed on Sunday, showed Vice President Harris supported by 43% of registered voters, with former President Trump supported by 42%, A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week showed Harris up 44%-42%. Harris consolidated her position as the Democratic candidate over the last 10 days, after Biden, 81, bowed to growing pressure within his party and dropped out of the race. Harris has since received a surge of donations and endorsements. Overall, voters have come to view Harris more favorably over the past month. The poll found that 46% of voters held a favorable view of her versus 51% who viewed her unfavorably. That compared with 40% favorable and 57% unfavorable in a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on July 2. Trump's favorability was little changed over that time, with 41% of registered voters viewing him favorably and 56% unfavorably in the most recent poll. The poll showed registered voters prefer Trump's approach on the economy, immigration and crime, while viewing Harris as having the better plan on healthcare. The poll of 1,025 U.S. adults, including 876 registered voters, was conducted online, in English from July 26-28. Well, of course, I've seen the reports, and all I can tell you right now is I think nothing takes away from the importance of, Nationwide polls gauge American voter support for politicians, but the presidency is usually captured in competitive states such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania that shift the balance in the U.S. Electoral College. HARRIS RUNNING MATE SEARCH Harris and her campaign continue to vet potential running mates behind closed doors, and a pick could be made soon as Harris prepares to campaign alongside that person in competitive battleground states next week. The contenders seeking that position have yet to build large national profiles, the poll suggests. U.S. Senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly of Arizona had the highest favorability rating among this group at 32%, followed by governors Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania at 27%; Andy Beshear of Kentucky at 20%, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois at 14% and Tim Walz of Minnesota at 11%. About half of registered voters responding to the poll said they had not heard of Kelly and were even less familiar with the others. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was not included in the latest poll, but 37% of registered voters responding to last week’s poll had a favorable view of him.

Vice President Kamala Harris has scored her fifth polling win in 24 hours, narrowing former President Donald Trump's lead with just over 100 days left until Election Day. A poll released on Friday by The Wall Street Journal found that Harris had all but eliminated Trump's lead, with the vice president trailing the former president by a 49 percent to 47 percent margin in a head-to-head matchup. The poll has a 3.1 percent margin of error. When independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy is included, the poll found that Harris overtakes Trump and has a slight lead, 45 percent to 44 percent. Kennedy was the choice of only 4 percent of respondents, while 5 percent were undecided. President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris on July 21, was losing to Trump by 6-point margins in both head-to-head and multi-candidate versions of the Wall Street Journal poll taken earlier this month. While early polling suggests that a Trump-Harris contest will likely be close, the momentum seems to have quickly shifted to Harris. The vice president has amassed mostly small but significant gains in at least four other polls of battleground states and young voters on Thursday and Friday. Dan Lamb, a senior lecturer at the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University, told Newsweek, "Harris won the week with strong speeches, viral social media" and important endorsements, predicting that her polling position may improve further in the near future. "It's hard to see the buzz letting up, with attention turning to her VP pick and the DNC's delegate voting starting in early August," Lamb added. "After that comes the DNC convention. The next several weeks could be very favorable for her polling." Grant Davis Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University, told Newsweek that he was "not surprised to see the race tighten a bit" because "Harris is not Biden, and Biden was on a pretty bad glide path." "Harris also has some of the traits that a lot of Democrats were looking for," Reeher said. "Her early performance has been good, and she's picking up some good endorsements. The money is coming in. All this has been widely reported in the press, which furthers the impression of new viability." "So it's not surprising that this would give you a bump," he continued. "What I don't see, however, is her making up the ground in the battleground states. But some newer polling may come out that shows this. Still, based on what we can see, she has some ground to make up." An Emerson College/The Hill poll of battlegrounds states released on Thursday found that Trump was leading Harris in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania and tied with the vice president in Wisconsin. However, a version of the poll taken earlier this month with Biden as the Democratic candidate showed Trump had significantly larger leads, while the former president was leading Biden in Wisconsin by 4 percent. A Fox News poll released on Friday suggested that Trump is losing ground in Michigan. Harris and Trump were tied in the new poll at 49 percent each, with a version of the poll taken in April showing that Biden trailed the former president by 49 percent to 46 percent. A University of New Hampshire poll released on Thursday found that Harris had opened up a 7-point head-to-head lead over Trump in New Hampshire. Previous polling of a hypothetical Trump-Harris race had shown the vice president slightly behind the former president, while Biden and Trump were tied. Additionally, a new Axios/Generation Lab poll of young voters found that Harris was crushing Trump in the 18-34 demographic. The poll, which was released on Thursday, showed that the vice president was preferred by 60 percent of young voters, while 40 percent preferred Trump. Biden had a 6-point lead over Trump. Reeher suggested that early Democratic "enthusiasm" for Harris' candidacy could be fueled by a perception that she is to the left of Biden on issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which may boost her standing among certain demographics but could ultimately hurt her chances in November. "If that is an impression that takes hold, she will have a very tough time in the battleground states, especially among the working and middle-class white voters," Reeher warned. "I'll be watching the convention speeches for indications about this issue. I'm sure this is being thought through." While the picture may change in coming weeks, Trump continues to hold a clear overall polling advantage over Harris as of Friday. Trump is also the favorite among bookmakers, with betting website Polymarket giving him a 59 percent chance of winning the election and Harris a 40 percent chance at the time of publication.

On November 5th Americans will go to the polls to elect their next president. Until June 27th it seemed a foregone conclusion that the match-up would be between the same two candidates as in 2020: Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent, and Donald Trump, his Republican predecessor in office. But that night Mr Biden delivered a disastrous debate performance. It immediately made Democrats question Mr Biden’s fitness for the job. On July 21st he bowed to pressure and withdrew from the race. He endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic candidate.

Early polls after Mr Biden dropped out suggest Ms Harris is closer to Mr Trump than her predecessor was, but she is still trailing; one by YouGov/The Economist on July 21st-23rd put Ms Harris at 41% and Mr Trump at 44%, while a New York Times/Siena poll from July 22nd-24th put her at 47% to his 48% among likely voters. Once there are sufficient polls to create a reliable average we will restart our tracker (for now we are reporting candidates’ favourability ratings).

Kamala Harris is now leading Donald Trump in a number of polls.

In a survey conducted by Morning Consult between July 22 and 24, Harris is leading Trump by one point, 46 percent supporting her, above the former president's 45 percent. The poll surveyed 11,297 registered U.S. voters and has a 1 percent margin of error.