Is Kamala Harris’s surge beginning to ebb?
That’s the question raised by this morning’s New York Times/Siena College poll, which finds Donald J. Trump narrowly ahead of her among likely voters nationwide, 48 percent to 47 percent.
To me, the result is a bit surprising. It’s the first lead for Mr. Trump in a major nonpartisan national survey in about a month. As a result, it’s worth being at least a little cautious about these findings, as there isn’t much confirmation from other polls.
That said, it wouldn’t be hard to explain if Vice President Harris’s support really has faded a bit in recent weeks. After all, she was benefiting from an ideal news environment: an uninterrupted month of glowing coverage from President Biden’s departure from the race in July to the Democratic convention in August. It’s possible she was riding a political sugar high; if so, it would make sense if she came off those highs in the two uneventful weeks since the convention.
There’s also a plausible reason the Times/Siena poll would be the first to capture a shift back toward Mr. Trump: There simply haven’t been many high-quality surveys fielded since the convention, when Ms. Harris was riding high. There was a scattering of online polls this week, but there hasn’t been a traditional high-quality survey with interviews conducted after Aug. 28.
Why haven’t there been more polls? One explanation is Labor Day weekend, which always puts a pause on polling. It’s also plausible that many pollsters might prefer to wait until after the debate Tuesday before taking another poll. Whatever the explanation, the Times/Siena poll would be one of the first opportunities to pick up a reversion back toward Mr. Trump.
Trump’s advantages
There’s no way to know whether the Times/Siena poll is too favorable for Mr. Trump. We never know whether the polls are “right” until the votes are counted.
But the poll nonetheless finds that he has significant advantages in this election — and they might just be enough to put him over the top.
He’s more popular than before. Overall, 46 percent of likely voters say they have a favorable view of the former president. That’s down a tick from our last national poll, when 47 percent had a favorable view, but it still makes him more popular than he was in 2016 or 2020.
He has an advantage on the issues. We asked voters a two-part question. First, what’s the most important issue to your vote? Second, do you think Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump is better on that issue? By that measure, Mr. Trump has a five-point lead on the issue that matters most to voters, whatever that may be for them.
He occupies the center. A near majority of voters say Mr. Trump is “not too far” to the left or right on the issues, while only around one-third say he’s “too far to the right.” Nearly half of voters, in contrast, say Ms. Harris is too far to the left; only 41 percent say she’s “not too far either way.”
This is one of Mr. Trump’s overlooked advantages. Yes, he’s outside of the political mainstream in many respects — he denied the result of the 2020 election. And yes, he does have conservative views on many issues, like immigration. But he’s also taken many positions that would have been likelier to be held by a Democrat than a Republican a decade ago, like opposition to cutting entitlements, support for a cooperative relationship with Russia or opposition to free trade. It’s a reputation he’s careful to protect, from saying he doesn’t support Project 2025 to his cagey position on additional measures to restrict abortion.
He’s seen as the change candidate in a nation that wants change. While President Biden’s departure from the race lifted the spirits of many Democrats, the national mood still isn’t great. An overwhelming majority of voters still say that the economy is poor and that the nation is heading in the wrong direction. And a clear majority — 61 percent — of voters say they want the next president to bring a “major change” from Mr. Biden, compared with 34 percent who want “minor change” and 3 percent who don’t want change.
Which candidate represents change in this election? While that has been hotly debated since Ms. Harris’s entry into the race, the respondents to the Times/Siena poll say it’s Mr. Trump.
Only 40 percent of likely voters said Ms. Harris represented “change,” while 55 percent said she represented “more of the same.” Mr. Trump, in contrast, was seen as representing “change” by 61 percent of voters, while only 34 percent said he was “more of the same.”
Mr. Trump, of course, has plenty of political weaknesses. A majority of voters still view him unfavorably — as they always have — and say he’s a “risky choice” for president. Abortion, democracy and Project 2025 all stand out as major liabilities in the poll.
But at least in this poll, Mr. Trump leads anyway. Worse for Ms. Harris, she is seen as having few strengths.
Is Harris getting defined?
When Ms. Harris entered the presidential race, she seemed like a candidate with a lot of potential liabilities. She took many unpopular positions in her 2019 presidential campaign, and she was tied to the Biden administration’s immigration policy as well.
In August, it seemed she could glide past all of these issues by running as a “generic” Democrat. She didn’t make many gestures to the middle. She didn’t roll out a robust policy platform. Instead, she mostly stuck to boilerplate Democratic messaging on abortion, strengthening the middle class, prices, democracy and more.
The advantage of this approach was obvious: A “generic” Democrat is often a winning one. The risk, however, was that Ms. Harris was inevitably going to be defined, one way or another, and that her campaign was mostly forfeiting its opportunity to clearly define her in the eyes of the public.
In this poll, the risks associated with this strategy are evident. Despite a month of favorable coverage, voters still don’t know enough about her: 28 percent of voters said they needed to learn more, compared with only 9 percent who said the same about Mr. Trump. More than anything, voters say they want to hear more about where she stands on the issues, something her campaign has seemed to struggled to lay out.
The poll also hints that the Trump campaign has begun to fill in some of the blanks. Nearly half of voters say she’s “too liberal or progressive.” A majority of voters see her as at least somewhat responsible for the problems along the border. And a majority of voters say she’s a “risky” choice and “more of the same” — hardly an enviable combination.
Ms. Harris, of course, will have plenty of additional opportunities to define herself for voters, beginning with the debate on Tuesday.
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