Vice President Kamala Harris appears to be reinvigorating voters.
A new poll conducted in the wake of President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign found Harris, the new presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in a near-dead heat with former President Donald Trump.
The New York Times and Siena College poll released on Thursday determined that if the election were held immediately, 47% of likely voters would pick Harris and 48% would go for Trump.
Among registered voters, 46% would vote for Harris and 48% would vote for Trump, the poll indicated. It surveyed 1,142 people from July 22 to July 24.
The narrow gap between Harris and Trump supports Democrats’ hope that Harris’ entry into the presidential race might shake up the field after Trump had been polling steadily ahead of Biden for weeks. In early July, a Times-Siena poll had Biden trailing Trump by 6 percentage points.
The president announced on Sunday that he would not seek another term in office after enduring weeks of fallout from a poor debate performance on June 27.
The new poll also found that a whopping 70% of Democrats wanted the party to quickly coalesce behind Harris rather than spend time considering different candidates. That appears to be happening — Biden wasted no time throwing his support behind Harris on Sunday and was followed by a wave of other prominent Democrats, including several governors who had been considered strong contenders for the nomination themselves.
The New York Times reported that Harris’ popularity among Democrats is even with Trump’s popularity among Republicans — around 93%.
Democratic National Convention delegates are expected to formally vote to make Harris their nominee by August 7. The DNC is scheduled for August 19 to 22 in Chicago.
She has yet to announce a running mate.
The Trump campaign issued a memo earlier this week in which its pollster Tony Fabrizio downplayed an expected bump in the polls for Harris, dubbing it the “Harris honeymoon.” Fabrizio said in the memo that he expects Trump to sail ahead once the race “settles back down.”
