Over the last few weeks, national polling has been starting to level off, as the honeymoon for Kamala Harris seems to be wearing off.
Kamala will not be happy to learn that in the latest New York Times poll, she has fallen behind Trump by two points.
Talking Points...
- Kamala falls behind Trump
- Current battleground polling
- Analysis
The polling, in this case, has been rather remarkable, actually. Trump does not budge, ever. So when these polling results change, it is because people are no longer buying what Kamaal Harris is selling. For example, when Biden was in the race, Trump was leading him in this particular poll 48-47. Harris came into the race, and she was polling as high as 52 percent, but Trump stayed steady. Now, some of that enthusiasm for Harris has fallen off, and she is down to 47%, but Trump is holding steady at 48%. And that is a number we often see for Trump in just about every poll.
One of the most significant issues for Harris right now is that voters still have no idea what her policies are, and they are finally pushing back on needing to know more about the Harris-Walz agenda. Harris finally added her platform to her website today, as well as using Project 2025 as Trump’s agenda. Only Project 2025 is NOT Trump’s agenda, but that of a private group that submitted what it would like to see from a conservative administration. So, once again, Harris is lying or misleading the American people.
Harris crushed Trump by nearly 3:1 in August fundraising, so she has started a massive ad blitz to offer some insight into her agenda, but the ads I have seen thus far are spewing lies about Trump’s agenda, and these are all lies that everyone is aware of, so I really don’t know how much a difference that will make.
One of the questions asked to voters was if they wanted to see a change in Biden’s agenda and which candidate was likely to bring that change. With 60% of respondents wanting change, only 25% believed that Harris would bring that change, while 53% said that Trump would bring the change.
Trump really needs to keep hammering this, including during the debate on Tuesday night, because he needs to win the popular vote and electoral vote in this election to silence critics of the Electoral College. I believe Trump was going to do that against Biden, but with the big push Harris got, Trump still has a long way to go before he can win both the electoral and popular vote.
Battleground polling remains tight between these two. Starting with Arizona, Trump still holds a slight lead, but his average lead is now down to 0.4%, with Harris and Trump deadlocked in the latest TIPP poll. Harris has jumped Trump in Georgia, now holding a 0.3% in the national average, while heads-up polling continues to go back and forth between these two.
Harris continues to lead in Michigan, but that lead is now down to 1.9%, with Trump either now tied or within a single point of Harris in the latest polling. In Nevada, Harris now leads by 0.5% in the national average, but the average of the last three polls has them dead even, as they both have a one-point lead in one poll and are dead even in the third.
Harris is still leading Donald Trump in the national average in Pennsylvania by 0.6%, but Trump had the edge in two of the last three polls, with them being tied in the third. In Wisconsin, Harris has ticked back up a point in the national average, leading Trump by 2.8%. However, in the latest CBS News poll, Trump is only two points behind.
Right now, the entire race is a toss-up because I am convinced that Harris can only win this election by taking the Blue Wall states of PA, Michigan, and Wisconsin. She is ahead by a small margin, but it is well within the margin of error, so this is a coin toss at this point.
The honeymoon is clearly over for Harris, so this will be a two-month grind to the finish line, but Trump has a big opportunity on Tuesday night. Oddly enough, the Harris camp is already trying to lower expectations about the debate, almost as if she expects to get beaten by Trump. If Harris loses this debate, there is no way she will do a second one, so Trump has to hit it out of the park on Tuesday night. If he does that, let’s give it a week to see how things settle then I think we will have a better picture of how this race will turn out.
