Vice President Kamala Harris is narrowly beating her rival Donald Trump in a national presidential poll released on Tuesday, the first conducted since US President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign ended.
Harris holds a double-digit lead over Trump, 44 percent versus 42 percent, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Sunday, two days after Biden announced he was dropping out of the race and endorsing his vice president.
In last week’s survey, Harris, 59, and Trump, 78, the eldest presidential contender, got 44 percent of the votes.
Harris, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, is garnering support, donations and pledged delegates, but another poll released on Tuesday shows her trailing Republican flagbearer Trump by a narrow margin.
Both results are within the error limits of the surveys.
The new surveys were conducted following the Republican National Convention, where Trump formally accepted the party’s presidential nomination, and Biden announced his exit from the race.
Harris’s performance in polls, driven by enthusiasm among Democratic voters about the turn in the race, shows that she has apparently neutralized the surge that a candidate usually receives in the days after his or her party’s nominating convention.
In the PBS News/NPR/Marist poll conducted Monday, Trump holds a lead over Harris at 46 percent and 45 percent of registered U.S. voters, with nine percent of voters still undecided.
If third-party candidates or independents are also included, Trump and Harris are tied at 42 percent, with the others far behind.
The PBS News survey notably found that 87 percent of Americans believe Biden’s decision to drop out of the election was the right move, a view that crosses partisan and generational boundaries.
A majority of respondents (41 percent) said Biden’s decision increased Democrats’ chances of winning in November, while 24 percent said it decreased the party’s chances and 34 percent said it made no difference.
Both surveys come after a shocking assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
Trump holds a slim lead of 1.6 percentage points over Harris, according to an average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.
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