Harris slightly shrinks Biden’s margins against Trump in new poll
The vice president has largely flipped the script on Democrats’ demoralized view of the 2024 race — though she’s still statistically tied with Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta’s Grand Boulé convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Wednesday. | Jamie Kelter Davis for POLITICO
By
JARED MITOVICH
07/24/2024 04:15 PM EDT
In the days since launching her presidential bid, Vice President Kamala Harris is polling slightly better than President Joe Biden did against former President Donald Trump — but the upended 2024 race is still statistically tied, according to a
CNN/SSRS poll published Wednesday.
Harris, the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for president, drew the support of 46 percent of registered voters in a hypothetical match-up, lower than Trump’s 49 percent but within the poll’s margin of error. Trump’s support is unchanged compared to previous editions of the CNN poll, while Harris polls 3 percentage points better than Biden did in a survey
released early this month. The latest poll is a panel-back survey, meaning that CNN interviewed people they have talked to before.
The poll found that Harris’ sudden ascension to the top of the ticket has excited a Democratic base that was demoralized
even before the weekslong drama about Biden’s disappointing June debate performance. At the same time, Trump hit his highest favorability rating among CNN polls since 2020, with backing from 43 percent of voters, following an
assassination attempt, a
unifying week at the Republican National Convention and Democratic disarray that culminated in
Biden’s historic withdrawal from the race.
Compared to Biden’s polling in
the early July CNN survey, Harris polls 9 percentage points higher among independents, 8 percentage points higher among people of color, 6 percentage points higher among women and voters under 35, and 5 percentage points higher among non-college educated voters. The survey did not measure any shifts in support of similar magnitude for Trump.
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There are other signs throughout the poll that voters are energized by Harris’ candidacy, even as they also view Trump more positively. Among Harris supporters, 50 percent say their vote is more so a vote for Harris, and 50 percent say their vote is more so a vote against Trump. That’s a significant flip from June, when only 37 percent of Biden supporters said their support was more so a vote for him and 63 percent said it was more so a vote against Trump.
Trump has similarly seen his supporters rally around him as a candidate. Seventy-four percent of those who plan to vote for him say their vote is more out of support for him rather than opposition to Harris, up 8 percentage points when the same question was asked in June about a Trump-Biden matchup. And 88 percent of Republicans say the party has a better chance of victory with Trump than anyone else, with a record share of Americans echoing this view.
She’s also soon expected to
name a running mate, facing a constrained timeline as the Democratic National Committee moves toward a
virtual roll call before Aug. 7 to formally nominate the presidential ticket.
The CNN/SSRS poll was conducted July 22-23, surveying 1,631 registered voters via phone and online panels with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.