Harris Edges Trump in Key States, With Sun Belt Now Up for Grabs

(Bloomberg) -- Kamala Harris has sustained the burst of momentum she brought to the presidential contest and is leading or tied with Republican Donald Trump in each of the seven states most likely to decide the race.

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The Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll — conducted across battleground states after last week’s Democratic National Convention — found the vice president has narrowed or reversed Trump’s advantage on key economic issues and established herself as more trusted than her rival to protect personal freedoms.

Harris now leads by 2 percentage points among registered voters across the seven states. She is ahead by 1 point — a statistical tie — among likely voters, a group that campaigns and pollsters begin to shift their attention to as election day nears. The statistical margin of error is 1 percentage point across the seven states.

Compared with her predecessor atop the Democratic ticket, President Joe Biden, Harris has opened up new possibilities for an Electoral College victory by putting Sun Belt swing states like Georgia and Nevada back in play.

Nowhere is that more striking than in North Carolina, where Harris now has a 2-point lead. No Democratic presidential candidate has won there since Barack Obama in 2008, and Trump led by 10 points as recently as April.

Harris’ surging fortunes in North Carolina have forced Republicans to spend more than $16 million on television ads there supporting Trump in the last five weeks.

The closest state is Arizona, where the candidates are dead even. In Wisconsin, Harris now has a statistically significant 8-point advantage.

Economic Trust

The poll shows that swing-state voters’ perceptions of the economy haven’t dramatically improved since Harris took over the top of the ticket. A majority of respondents still say they were better off under Trump.

But voters appear less likely to hold Harris responsible for the economic insecurities that plagued Biden. By a 7-point margin, swing-state voters trust Harris over Trump to help the middle class. On several economic factors, Harris has dented Trump’s advantage or even claimed the high ground.

When it comes to who voters trust more to handle housing costs, Harris has a 4-point advantage over Trump. On that issue, Biden recently had a 6-point deficit to the Republican. Harris has also overtaken Trump on the issues of government benefits, pay raises and personal debt.

And on the single biggest economic factor of the election, the rising cost of everyday goods, Harris has trimmed Trump's advantage by 11 points. Voters still trust Trump far more on the issues of gas prices and stock market performance, however.

Even on areas like immigration and crime — the two topics that Trump and his aligned super PACs have employed most often in swing-state attack ads — Harris has chipped away at the trust advantage Trump had when his opponent was Biden.

Abortion continues to be motivating for Harris voters, with nearly three in four swing-state Democrats saying it's "very important" to their vote. And Harris has widened her lead over Trump on that issue, with 55% of swing state voters saying they trust her, compared to 34% for Trump.

Harris also used her convention to attempt to reclaim concepts like freedom and patriotism — long associated with the Republican party — for the Democrats.

By a 5-point margin, swing-state voters trust her over Trump to protect personal freedom, a catch-all phrase that Democrats have used to talk about reproductive rights, same-sex marriage and book bans. Still, by the same margin, swing-state voters were more likely to say they find Trump to be patriotic.

Honeymoon Continues

Presidential candidates typically get a small bump in support after the pageantry of their conventions, but an extraordinary series of events this summer has disrupted the normal rhythms of modern campaigns.

The earliest-ever presidential debate in June saw Biden perform so poorly that he dropped out under pressure less than a month later. Trump survived an assassination attempt before his own convention and was enjoying his largest lead in national polls just before Harris entered the race, bringing new enthusiasm and record fundraising to the Democratic ticket. In the week of her star-studded party convention, her campaign said she raised $82 million.

“Kamala Harris did not get a convention bump because she got a bump at the beginning of her campaign. Her bump was her campaign launch,” said Eli Yokley, US politics analyst for Morning Consult. “What we have seen continue since she got in the race is substantial positive coverage breaking through to voters. The buzz around her campaign is very positive.”

One sign of that excitement is the optimism among Democrats about a Harris victory: The poll found 84% of Harris supporters say they expect her to win, compared to 79% of Trump voters predicting the same for their candidate.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that he is leading in all or most polls, even as the tide has turned in national surveys. But his campaign has increasingly argued that pollsters have been wrong about Trump in the past and will be again.

As the Democratic convention ended last week, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio predicted that Harris would get a temporary “bump” in the polls, driven largely by “fawning coverage of Harris and negative coverage of President Trump.”

“We’ve certainly had a front row seat to the ‘honeymoon,’” Fabrizio wrote in a memo. “In fact, the media decided to extend the honeymoon for over four weeks now.”

In the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll, swing-state voters were more likely to report hearing positive news about Harris during her convention. About 50% of voters said they heard mostly positive news about Harris last week, compared to 39% who said the news was mostly negative. That difference — which marketers call a "buzz score" — is positive 11 points for Harris.

A majority of those same voters said most of the news they heard about Trump was negative, for a buzz score of minus 22 points.

As the campaigns enter their final sprint after the Labor Day holiday weekend, Harris’ challenge will be to figure out how to maintain that edge in the face of withering attacks from Trump and his allies.

Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to suspend his campaign and throw his support to Trump didn't have an obvious effect on the race. Kennedy received support from 5% of respondents in the Bloomberg poll last month, down from a high of 10% last November. The number of swing-state voters who said they were undecided or would not vote increased this month, suggesting that many Kennedy voters might now stay home.

Running Mates

Democrats also appear to have an edge at the bottom of the ticket. About 30% of swing-state voters say Harris’ selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz made them more likely to vote for her, while only 23% said the same last month about Ohio Senator JD Vance after Trump picked him as his running mate.

Swing-state voters were more likely to see Walz as mentally fit, compassionate, honest and experienced than Vance, who is more often seen as dangerous.

And the poll found that at least one Walz line of attack was working: Swing-state voters rated both Trump and Vance as “weird” more often than their counterparts on the Democratic ticket.

Methodology

The Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll surveyed 4,962 registered voters in seven swing states: 805 in Arizona, 801 in Georgia, 702 in Michigan, 450 in Nevada, 700 in North Carolina, 803 in Pennsylvania and 701 in Wisconsin. The surveys were conducted online from August 23 to August 27. The aggregated data across the seven swing states were weighted to approximate a target sample of swing-state registered voters based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, 2020 presidential vote and state. State-level data were weighted to approximate a target sample of registered voters in the respective state based on gender, age, race/ethnicity, marital status, home ownership, and 2020 presidential vote. The statistical margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point across the seven states; 3 percentage points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania; 4 percentage points in Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and 5 percentage points in Nevada.

--With assistance from Elena Mejía.

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