Kamala Harris speaking at an event in 2019. Photo: Gage Skidmore, Openverse
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Four days into the candidacy of Kamala Harris, we have a brand new presidential race, folks. It’s right there in today’s numbers, and the race is only a few days old.
No, you’re not dreaming: That horrid harbinger of hard-to-take news about this year’s presidential campaign, the Times/Siena poll, is out today with heartening news for Democrats. Kamala Harris is only one point behind Donald Trump with likely voters in a one-to-one match up, 47 percent to 48 percent for Trump. The poll was taken July 22-24. The last Times/Siena poll, taken in early July after Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump, had Trump ahead of Biden by six points.
That’s a five-point gain over the last poll, and Kamala Harris has been the presumptive nominee for only three days, having picked up enough delegates to carry the convention on Monday.
Among registered voters, Trump leads Harris 48 percent to 46 percent. In this category, Trump was ahead of Biden by nine points in the Times/Siena poll after the debate.
Other good news: Harris is ahead with voters under 45 by 10 points over Trump. In the last poll, Trump was ahead of Biden with that group of voters. Harris also gained among Hispanic voters over the numbers Biden had after the debate. In fact, Harris’ numbers in this poll among young and Hispanic voters are better than any poll Times/Siena did this year. Even among non-voters, Harris has beaten Biden’s numbers in every poll taken since the campaign began in earnest. This is a key result for Democrats, who have cranked up voter registration drives in every battleground state and will doubtlessly increase those efforts now.
Here is the number that really caught my attention: After three weeks of hand-wringing by Democrats about Biden post-debate, an astounding 87 percent of all voters – including Democrats, Republicans and Independents – approve of President Biden’s decision to withdraw in favor of Vice President Harris. Only 9 percent opposed his decision. As the Times put it, “The Times/Siena poll has never found 87 percent of voters who agreed on anything.”
Among Democrats, 79 percent think that the party should nominate Kamala Harris at its convention next month, with only 14 percent thinking it should be some other unnamed person. That is about as unified as you can get three or four days after Harris entered the presidential race.
The Times called today’s poll numbers “a reset to where the race was before Mr. Biden imploded on a debate stage in Atlanta.” That is misleading. The Times/Siena poll taken before the debate had Trump ahead by four points. Trump had enjoyed a slowly growing advantage over Biden in the national polls before the debate in June. I would say the new Times/Siena poll numbers reflect a complete reset in the presidential race, especially when you consider that Kamala Harris has had only a couple of days to introduce herself to the electorate. She had only one rally after Biden dropped out, and it happened during the time the poll was taken. After she has hit the road through the battleground states, I think we’ll see a significant bump in her poll numbers.
After the Democratic National Convention in August, which will celebrate her life and story, the polls are certain to show a significant bump for Harris.
Meanwhile, Trump is reported to be frustrated with the fact that he has lost control of the campaign narrative. Practically every story since Sunday has been about the Kamala Harris campaign, how much money she has raised, what she said at her rally in Milwaukee, and color pieces about her past as a prosecutor and attorney general in California.
Harris released a new ad today with background music by Beyonce, featuring her song “Freedom” supplementing the “freedom” theme of the ad. Trump is known for stealing songs by the Rolling Stones and other rock and roll acts and using them at his rallies even after being issued cease and desist orders. Maybe he’ll use a Kid Rock or Ted Nugent song in one of his ads. That should just thrill the under-30 voters who have probably never heard of either so-called “rock star.”
I have dreaded for months seeing the words “new Times/Siena poll results” in my news feed. But four days into the candidacy of Kamala Harris, we have a brand new presidential race, folks. It’s right there in today’s numbers, and the race is only three days old.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives in rural Pennsylvania and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better.
You can read Lucian Truscott's daily articles at luciantruscott.substack.com. We encourage our readers to get a subscription.
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