Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is less than a month old, but the latest polls from the New York Times and Siena College already show her ahead of former President Donald Trump in the crucial battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Before President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July, he had a small lead over Trump in an earlier Times/Siena poll in Wisconsin. But pulled the former president in Michigan and Pennsylvania. This worried the Democratic leaders at the time. Biden’s reputation in these states had deteriorated and threatened not only his re-election but also that of also candidates who are further down on the ballot papers.
However, Harris now has a much stronger position in the three must-win states. In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Harris now leads Trump by four percentage points among likely voters (50% to 46%).
In recent opinion polls, Harris has performed strongly in the groups she needs to win over to defeat Trump in the general election in November.
In all three states, Harris was ahead of Trump by 20 percentage points among women (58 to 38%) and 15 percentage points among 18- to 29-year-olds (56 to 41%). Harris was ahead by 10 percentage points among suburban voters (53 to 43%) and even retained much of Biden’s strength among seniors: she was ahead by 13 percentage points among seniors in all three states (55 to 42%).
The latest poll is significant because both Harris’ and Trump’s campaign strategies are aimed at appealing to voters in these swing states.
Pennsylvania is the group’s biggest electoral victory, with 19 electoral votes. Many Democrats wanted Harris to nominate the state’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate, but earlier this week she chose Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a former congressman who represented a conservative-leaning district for 12 years but has a progressive record as governor of the state.
Democrats are convinced that Walz will continue to be an asset to Harris in Pennsylvania, but will also provide support in the contested constituencies of Michigan (15 votes) and Wisconsin (10 votes) in the Midwest of the USA.
For Trump, the nomination of Republican Senator from Ohio, JD Vance, as his running mate in July was a signal to his conservative base in a campaign that was at the time increasingly trending in his favor.
But Harris’s entry into the presidential race has completely changed the dynamic. Vance has struggled to appeal to swing voters in the suburbs who were once undecided but now seem to see the vice president as a viable alternative.
Harris is likely to be the slight favorite going into the Democratic National Convention on August 19 in many of the swing states closest to her. If Harris continues to gain ground in the polls after the convention, that would certainly put even more pressure on Trump to refocus his campaign ahead of the debate between the two candidates on September 10.
