According to the latest poll, Kamala Harris is five points ahead of Donald Trump in the race for the US presidential election.
Harris reportedly increased her lead from 42 percent to 37 percent, after trailing Trump by just three percentage points in a July 23 poll.
Due to the latest result, online betting odds have now turned against the former president and Harris is now considered an even bigger favorite.
Ipsos conducted a poll of 2,045 U.S. adults in August and found that 4% of respondents supported independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., up from 10% in July.
Harris entered the race on July 21 after 81-year-old President Joe Biden abandoned his campaign and endorsed Harris following a disastrous performance in the debate against Trump on June 27.
Kamala Harris is five points ahead of Donald Trump in the latest US presidential poll
Thursday’s press conference in Palm Beach was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate.
Last week, a surprise poll showed Harris leading Trump by four percentage points nationwide.
According to the Marquette University Law School poll, Harris’ lead is larger when third-party candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are included.
This put her ahead of Republican Trump by 52 to 48. If you include Kennedy, Jill Stein and Cornel West, her lead grew to 47 for Harris and 41 for Trump. Kennedy received 9 percent.
Harris entered the race on July 21 after 81-year-old President Joe Biden abandoned his campaign and endorsed Harris following a disastrous performance in the debate against Trump on June 27.
On September 10, she will debate Trump on ABC, marking the first direct meeting between the two rivals in a race that polls suggest will be close.
In a press conference at his residence in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump said he wanted additional debates on September 4 and 25, which would be broadcast on Fox and NBC.
Harris said in a post on X that she was looking forward to the September 10 debate after Trump “finally committed.”
After a campaign appearance in the Detroit area, she told reporters she was open to discussions about further debates, but a campaign official reiterated the position that a Fox debate on Sept. 4 was out of the question.
The Harris team had already spoken out against a Fox debate, arguing that the network hosting both parties’ debates should be one that sponsored the recent primary debates.
Trump had previously hinted that he might pull out of the ABC debate, which was scheduled before Harris, the US vice president, replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate less than three weeks ago, upending the election campaign.
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate
Thursday’s press conference in Palm Beach was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.
Harris and Walz headlined rallies this week in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, drawing tens of thousands of attendees, another sign of how much their late entry into the race has mobilized Democrats.
The Democratic couple’s visit to a union hall on Thursday came after the campaign team said it viewed labor organizations as key to decision-making in the election.
Harris’s meteoric rise has forced Trump’s team to recalibrate its strategy and messaging. Polls show Harris has closed Trump’s lead over Biden, and Democrats have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from voters and major donors since Harris became the party’s nominee.
Trump stressed on Thursday that he had not changed his attitude toward the election campaign. In a question-and-answer session with reporters that lasted over an hour, Trump jumped from topic to topic and said Harris and Walz were weak candidates.
Nevertheless, Trump expressed regret that he would not be able to run against Biden in the November 5 election and suggested that the president had fallen victim to a plot to oust him from the top of the Democratic ticket.
Biden abandoned his faltering re-election campaign because his Democrats were concerned about his chances of winning after his poor performance in the debate against Trump.
Asked about his controversial comments last week that Harris, who is black and of Indian descent, had recently “accidentally turned black,” Trump said: “You have to ask her that, because she said it, not me. … It doesn’t matter to me. But from her perspective, I think it’s very disrespectful to both, whether they’re Indian or black, I think it’s very disrespectful to both.”
Trump’s initial comments to an audience of black journalists sparked widespread criticism and left donors and staff confused and disturbed. The Trump campaign team did not immediately provide further comment to provide evidence of the Harris comments to which Trump allegedly referred.
Online betting odds have now turned in Harris’ favor, while odds for Trump have fallen sharply
Trump also mocked the size of the crowds at Harris’ campaign rally on Thursday, even though they have recently matched his own. He falsely claimed that the size of the crowd he spoke to on Jan. 6, 2021, the day his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, was as large as those that filled the National Mall in Washington in 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
“We actually had more people,” Trump said. “But I’m OK with that because I liked Dr. Martin Luther King.”
According to the National Constitution Center, King delivered his speech in August 1963 to an estimated crowd of 250,000 people. Trump’s rally on January 6, 2021, drew about 53,000 supporters, according to the House Select Committee’s report “187 Minutes of Dereliction of Duty.”
In a recent line of attack from his campaign team, Trump criticized Harris for not giving a press interview since the launch of her campaign.
“She can’t give an interview. She’s barely competent,” Trump said, later calling her “mean” again, a popular catchphrase he often uses to disparage female critics.
Trump has given regular interviews with the media in the past, but mostly to friendly, right-leaning media outlets and journalists. On Wednesday, he called into the morning program “Fox & Friends” and answered questions from the hosts.
Trump announced the Palm Beach press conference on his social media platform on Thursday morning. Only a select group of reporters received the advance notice needed to travel to his Florida resort in time. Reuters did not receive an invitation.
Harris answered a handful of questions from reporters after meeting with autoworkers in Wayne, Michigan, on Thursday after the United Auto Workers union endorsed her candidacy. She said she plans to schedule an in-person interview “before the end of the month.”
