The latest polling confirms that Trump retains locked-in support from about half of voters, despite the Republican’s historic status as a convicted felon and his role in instigating the unprecedented attempt to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
Harris, who only jumped into the race after President Biden quit in July, has rapidly transformed herself from a little-noticed vice president into a serious contender. However, the polls show she has not made a breakthrough, leaving the race a toss-up.
A New York Times/Siena poll found that 78-year-old Trump is leading Harris nationally by 48 to 47 percent, well within the margin of error.
US presidential elections are decided by tallying the results of state-by-state contests, rather than an overall national popular vote, meaning that a tiny handful of swing states typically determine the balance.
The poll found Harris, 59, narrowly ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and tied in four other swing states: Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona.
The latest polling confirms that Trump retains locked-in support from about half of voters, despite the Republican’s historic status as a convicted felon and his role in instigating the unprecedented attempt to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
Harris, who only jumped into the race after President Biden quit in July, has rapidly transformed herself from a little-noticed vice president into a serious contender. However, the polls show she has not made a breakthrough, leaving the race a toss-up.
A New York Times/Siena poll found that 78-year-old Trump is leading Harris nationally by 48 to 47 percent, well within the margin of error.
US presidential elections are decided by tallying the results of state-by-state contests, rather than an overall national popular vote, meaning that a tiny handful of swing states typically determine the balance.
The poll found Harris, 59, narrowly ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and tied in four other swing states: Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona.
Harris will need to use the huge viewership to connect with Americans in a way that she was unable to as vice president and has had little time to accomplish in her super-condensed campaign run.
With Trump now the oldest presidential nominee in US history, she is pitching an optimistic, forward-looking message in contrast to Trump’s apocalyptic claims that the country faces terminal decline without him in the White House.
But Harris has also been accused of running on vague optimism and unity at the expense of putting out concrete policies.
She finally addressed the growing pressure late Sunday when her campaign put out a policy page, touching on subjects from unions and cost-of-living issues to healthcare
Sexist Taunts
At the same time, Harris will have to solve the conundrum of how to debate Trump, who habitually makes false statements on nearly every topic and loves to get under his opponents’ skin. Biden, in his only debate against Trump before dropping his candidacy, found himself entirely unable to cope.
Already, Trump has been subjecting Harris in his speeches to racist and sexist taunts, deliberately mispronouncing her name and calling her “crazy” and a “Marxist.”
“It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” Harris supporter and current transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN.
The Harris campaign announced it would “barnstorm battleground states” after the debate, beginning in North Carolina, and then Pennsylvania.
Trump held a rally in Wisconsin on Saturday where he appealed to his mostly white, working-class base with a dark speech claiming that he is struggling against a “rogue regime” where Democrats “imported murderers, child predators, and serial rapists from all over the planet.