Vice President Harris leads former President Trump by 2 points in one of the first polls taken after President Biden’s decision to step aside from his reelection bid.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday, showed Harris just ahead with 44 percent support to Trump’s 42 percent among registered voters, within the poll’s margin of error. But the figures are an improvement for the Democrats from a similar poll taken before Biden’s announcement.
In that poll released one week ago, Trump led Biden by 2 points and was tied with Harris, all within the margin of error.
Trump currently leads Harris by 2 points, 48 to 46 percent, in an aggregate of polls maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ.
In the most recent poll of a three-way race with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Harris leads by 4 points, with 42 percent support to Trump’s 38 percent and Kennedy’s 8 percent.
Pollsters also found some improvements in the numbers for the Democratic candidate since Biden’s announcement and endorsement of Harris on Sunday. They found 56 percent of registered voters said Harris is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” while just 22 percent said the same about Biden.
By comparison, 49 percent said that about Trump.
The vice president’s favorability rating among all adults also ticked up, rising from 39 percent a week ago to 44 percent now. The percentage of respondents who view her unfavorably dropped from 53 percent to 50 percent.
Trump’s favorability rating remained exactly the same, with 41 percent viewing him favorably and 55 percent viewing him unfavorably.
Shortly after the poll was released, Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio warned in a memo of a coming “Harris Honeymoon” in which he expects the vice president to receive widespread positive coverage from media outlets.
He said she would energize Democrats, but only in the short term, causing a temporary effect where Harris narrows Trump’s leads or gains on him.
Fabrizio added Democrats and media outlets will use these numbers to argue that the race has fundamentally changed, but it has not.
The poll was conducted from July 22 to 23 among 1,241 U.S. adults, including 1,018 registered voters. The margin of error was 3 points for the entire sample and 3.3 points for registered voters.