Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump in three crucial battleground states, according to new polls published yesterday, apparently eroding the advantage the former president has enjoyed there over the past year.
The polls of likely voters by the New York Times and Siena College showed Democratic presidential candidate Harris leading her Republican rival Trump by an identical 50% to 46% margin in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Under the US electoral college voting system, those three populous Midwestern states are considered key to victory for either party.
Harris’s lead is within the polls’ margin of error of 4.5 points.
Nevertheless, the polls show a shift compared to previous surveys in those states which for nearly a year had shown Trump either tied with or slightly leading Democratic President Joe Biden.
Biden dropped out of the White House race last month.
The polling also showed that voters still prefer Trump on the key issues of the economy and immigration, though Harris had a 24-point advantage when voters were asked whom they trust on the question of abortion.
The Trump campaign pushed back against the new polls, questioning their methodology and suggesting they were released “with the clear intent and purpose of depressing support for” Trump.
Much can change in the nearly three months before the November 5 election.
Harris has enjoyed an even bigger bump in favourability – up 10 points among registered voters in Pennsylvania in just a month, the Times/Siena polling found.
Voters said they saw her as more intelligent than Trump and having a better temperament to govern.
The surveys were conducted between August 5-9, with at least 600 voters in each state.
An Ipsos poll published on Thursday showed Harris led Trump nationally 42% to 37% in the race for the November 5 election.
That online nationwide poll of 2,045 US adults was conducted August 2-7 and had a margin of error of around three percentage points.
