Kamala Harris begins to pull away from Donald Trump for first time in latest election polling

Kamala Harris appears to be pulling ahead of Donald Trump in presidential election polling for the first time, with the Democrat taking a three-point lead over the Republican former president in a new survey.

A poll for NPR, PBS and Marist published on Wednesday places the Vice President on 51 per cent of the vote overall, compared to Trump’s 48 per cent, and comes after her choice of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate was met with an overwhelmingly positive response.

Harris also leads Trump on abortion by a huge 15 per cent margin, although the latter has a six-point advantage over the former when it comes to illegal immigration, suggesting MAGA attacks on the Democrat’s past role as a “border czar” within the Biden administration are hurting her on that issue.

The poll in question was conducted between August 1-4 and comes with a margin of error of 3.4 per cent.

Now that Harris’s rapid emergence from Joe Biden’s shadow in the last two weeks has seen her officially secure enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination, a number of national polls have begun to emerge comparing her head-to-head with Trump for the first time.

A recent SurveyUSA poll also put her three points ahead of Trump on 48 per cent to 45 per cent, as did a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll (46 per cent to 43 per cent) while one for Morning Consult put the gap at four points: 48 per cent to 44 per cent.

Others argue the contest remains much closer, however, with YouGov/CBS News still placing Harris ahead but only by a single point at 50 per cent to 49 per cent.

Real Clear Polling gives Harris an overall advantage of just half a percentage point in its average of 11 recent polls, taking into account all of those quoted above.

Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at Amherst, notes that Harris’s three-point lead in her institution’s poll is all the more remarkable given that President Biden was four points behind Trump in January, meaning she has more than eaten up that deficit less than two weeks into her candidacy.

“For weeks after the first presidential debate in June, Democratic donors, prominent Democratic elected officials and members of the news media made the case that President Joe Biden faced long odds to defeat former president Donald Trump and called for Biden to step down,” Professor Nteta said.

“In the aftermath of Biden’s historic decision to forgo his re-election campaign, it seems as if Biden’s critics were indeed correct as his replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, has emerged as the frontrunner in the race for the White House.

“While there are still three months to go, the Harris campaign and the Democratic Party must like their chances to maintain control of the White House and to send former President Trump to his second consecutive defeat in his quest to return to Pennsylvania Avenue.”

The picture is somewhat less rosy for Harris with regards to the swing states, with a Fox News poll finding her deadlocked with Trump in Pennsylvania, the state in which she unveiled Walz as her running mate on Tuesday evening and which she could have attempted to sow up by selecting its governor, Josh Shapiro, in his stead.

Democratic firm Public Policy Polling finds the Vice President down one in Pennsylvania and in Georgia and two behind in Arizona, whose senator Mark Kelly might have also have helped her make headway there.

Polling site FiveThirty Eight agrees that Trump is up two in Arizona and one in Georgia but sees Harris ahead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, albeit by extremely narrow margins in each case.

For his part, Trump has been left reeling by Harris’s sudden ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket, struggling to find a meaningful means of attacking her beyond mispronouncing her name or questioning her ethnicity, while Walz’s labeling of the Republican and his running mate JD Vance as “weird” appears to have taken root with voters.