WASHINGTON: A new poll confirmed Sunday that Kamala Harris – who will soon name her vice presidential pick – has drawn a similar tone to Donald Trump, upending a White House race the Republican had become increasingly confident he would win.
As the Nov. 5 election fast approaches, Harris has erased the growing lead Trump built before President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid.
According to the CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday, Harris has a one percent advantage over Trump nationwide — compared to Trump's previous five-point lead over Biden.
In the swing states that decide the Electoral College contest in US elections, Harris and Trump – who shocked the world with his presidential victory in 2016 but were beaten by Biden in 2020 – are tied.
Those are considered good numbers for a Democratic candidate who parachuted into the race only last month, as Biden bowed to growing concerns about his mental acuity and ability at 81 to serve a second term.
But Harris, who is Biden's vice president and the first black and South Asian woman ever in the role, is in a sprint to define herself to voters before Trump does.
A big moment in that process will be when Harris announces her choice for vice president in a historic bid to become America's first female president.
“It's her first big decision that she's making as chief executive, so it speaks to her thought process,” Amy Walter, a polling expert with the Cook Political Report newsletter, told CBS News.
The CBS poll, which echoes many other polls indicating rapid gains by Harris, shows that Trump remains favored by voters on the key issue of the economy.
Only 25 percent said they expected to be better off financially if Harris wins, compared to 45 percent who said that about Trump.
But when it comes to trusting the candidates' temperaments, the poll shows voters prefer the former California prosecutor to Trump, a convicted felon who has made a career out of publicly insulting those who oppose him — even when he was president.
The issue of cognitive health, which used to bedevil Biden, is now a liability for 78-year-old Trump, the poll found. Only 51 percent of those polled thought Trump was mentally fit for the presidency, compared to 64 percent for Harris.
Democrats believe that if you “make this a referendum on Trump rather than a referendum on the current state of the economy, then we have a real opportunity to win,” Cook said.
Riding high politically last month after surviving an assassination attempt at a rally, Trump then used the Republican convention to project his image of strength against the physically frail Biden.
But with Biden's dramatic exit and Harris' rapid start, he's trying to recalibrate.
At a rally Saturday in the swing state of Georgia, Trump called Harris a “Marxist” and a “radical left-wing freak” and claimed she would cause an “economic crash.” On Wednesday, he shocked many when he told an audience of black journalists that Harris had “turned black” for political reasons.
Where Biden often attacked Trump as a threat to democracy, given his unprecedented refusal to accept his loss in 2020, Harris' team has honed a sharper — more meme-friendly — line built around labeling Trump and his vice presidential pick JD Vance “weird.”
On Saturday, the Harris campaign said Trump was “scared” to debate her after he turned down a previously scheduled televised debate on ABC, while saying he would be ready to debate her on Fox News — a network that for several years have given him support. .
Who will she choose as a candidate?
All roads to the White House go through a handful of swing states, and Harris will kick off her five-day run Tuesday in the biggest — Pennsylvania — as she builds momentum for her Nov. 5 showdown with Republican Donald Trump.
The expectation is that Harris will pick a white man to balance the ticket — and likely a moderate Democrat who would help counter attacks on Harris by Republicans that she is too far to the left.
The three figures seen to top the list — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona — all visited Harris in Washington on Sunday, The Washington Post reported.
“At this moment we are faced with a choice between two visions for our nation: one focused on the future and the other on the past… This campaign is about people coming together, driven by love of country, to fight for it best for who we are,” she wrote on X.
After winning enough delegate votes to secure the Democratic nomination, the nation's first female, black and South Asian vice president heads into the national convention in Chicago in two weeks with total control of her party.
In a campaign barely two weeks old, the 59-year-old former prosecutor has obliterated fundraising records, drawn huge crowds and dominated social media on his way to erasing the electoral leads Trump had built before President Joe Biden left the race.
Next on the agenda is a vice presidential run, with an announcement expected any time before her Tuesday night rally with the mystery candidate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania's largest city.
The Keystone State is the most prized real estate among the hard-fought battlegrounds that determine the Electoral College system.
It's part of the “blue wall” that carried Biden to the White House in 2020, along with Michigan and Wisconsin — two states where Harris is expected to woo crowds Wednesday.
Pennsylvania is governed by the 51-year-old Democrat Shapiro, a forerunner in the so-called “veepstakes” list.
Later this week, Harris will tour the more racially diverse Sun Belt and southern states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina, as she tries to shore up the black and Hispanic vote that had been peeling away from Democrats.
Just a month ago, Trump was on cruise control, having opened up a significant lead in swing state polls following a dismal debate performance by Biden, with the Republican tycoon keeping the country in suspense over his own vice presidential pick.
Trump's White House bid was boosted on July 21 when 81-year-old Biden, with growing concerns about his age and lagging poll numbers, left the race and endorsed Harris.
The vice president, energetic and two decades younger than 78-year-old Trump, is off to a fast start, raising $310 million in July, according to her campaign — more than double Trump's haul.
While Biden made loud pleas for a return to probity and the preservation of democracy, Harris has focused on the future, making the voters' hard-fought “freedom” the touchstone of her campaign.
She and her allies have also been more aggressive than the Biden camp — mocking Trump for reneging on his commitment to a Sept. 10 debate and characterizing the convicted felon as an elderly crook and “weird.”
Although she has dismissed some of the left-wing positions she took during her ill-fated 2020 primary campaign, Harris has not given a wide-ranging interview since jumping into the race, and rally-goers will be looking for more details about her plans for Land.
Meanwhile, Trump and his Republicans have struggled to adjust to their new opponent or hone their attacks on Harris — first announcing she was dangerously liberal on immigration and crime, before suggesting she lied about being black.
