A new poll released Wednesday shows Kamala Harris has a significant lead over Donald Trump in key states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, two “Blue Wall” battlegrounds seen as crucial to winning the White House in November.
Polls conducted after the September 10 televised debate between the two candidates showed that Vice President Harris would have an edge after the contest, who was widely believed to have performed better than her Republican rival on stage.
In the latest survey of likely voters by Quinnipiac University, Harris leads former President Trump 51 percent to 45 percent in Pennsylvania, and 50-45 percent in Michigan, two states in the post-industrial Rust Belt in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.
In Wisconsin, a third Rust Belt state seen as crucial to Harris’s win, the race was nearly tied, with Harris ahead by one percentage point, according to Quinnipiac.
Overall polling shows the tightest contests are in seven states that will likely determine the winner in the US Electoral College system.
Trump has a slight lead in the so-called Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina, according to a mix of polls on survey tracker RealClearPolitics.com. It also shows Harris barely ahead in the fourth Sun Belt state, Nevada.
The survey of 1,331 likely voters in Pennsylvania is notable because Harris’ six-point margin is outside Quinnipiac’s 2.7 percent margin of error — and is double the three percentage point margin of the same survey in August.
Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee in July after President Joe Biden dramatically ended his re-election bid following a poor debate performance against Trump.
Her entry gave the party an energetic jolt and she has fared better against Trump than Biden in the polls. Recent weeks are seen as crucial for Harris as voters have limited time to get to know the vice president and her policies before Election Day on November 5.
“Three crucial swing states are sounding alarm bells for the Trump campaign,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement. He added that the Republican Party’s “attack strategy against Democrats on immigration and the economy may be losing momentum.”
The latest post-debate national poll from ABC News/Ipsos shows Harris leading by four points overall, while a post-debate Atlas Intel poll shows Trump ahead by three percentage points nationally.
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