Author: John Byrne-Murdoch, Oliver Lord
Source: FT Chinese
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (left) and Donald Trump. Harris has gained ground among nearly every demographic group since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
US Vice President Kamala Harris has tied former President Donald Trump in the polls less than a week into her presidential campaign, according to a Financial Times analysis of the latest data.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on July 21 after a poor performance in a debate with Trump weeks earlier and immediately endorsed Harris. Since then, she has all but erased the Democratic deficit to its rivals in national polls, according to a Financial Times average of polls.
Although Biden trailed Trump by 3 percentage points on the day he dropped out of the presidential race, Harris and the former president are currently neck and neck in national approval ratings.
The U.S. election is ultimately decided by the Electoral College, and therefore by a small number of winner-take-all "battleground" states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In all six key battlegrounds, Harris' recent polling is between 1 and 3 points higher than it was before Biden dropped out of the race more than a week ago. While Biden was trailing by two points or more in each of those six states when he dropped out, Harris is now 50-50 with Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin and within a point of him in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona. All of the states are statistically deadlocked.
Harris has made gains among nearly every demographic group since Biden dropped out, according to apples-to-apples comparisons from numerous pollsters. In particular, she has gained support among Blacks, Latinos, young and female voters, and independents. Only one group — voters over 50 — has seen a slight decline in support.
Prediction traders who closely track the race have noticed the changes. Harris’s price on two prediction markets, Polymarket and PredictIt, has surpassed Biden’s pre-debate price, though they still see her as slightly inferior to Trump, whose price surged after the July 13 assassination attempt.
With less than 100 days until the election, Harris has injected significant enthusiasm into a previously demoralized Democratic Party.
Harris’ candidacy has also revived enthusiasm among Democratic voters in a race where turnout is crucial. Analysis of polls by the Financial Times shows that 73% of those who voted for Biden in 2020 said they were “excited” to vote for Harris, while only 37% said they were excited to vote for Biden again. In addition, the proportion of voters who voted for Biden in 2020 who plan not to vote this time has dropped from 10% to 3%.
With the renewed enthusiasm has come generous fundraising: Harris' campaign announced Sunday that it had raised $200 million in less than a week, two-thirds of which came from first-time donations.
