Trump Retakes Lead In Two National Polls As Harris Peaks

Vice President Kamala Harris seemed to inject new energy into the Democratic voter base with her entry into the presidential race following Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign. However, this initial enthusiasm may have already reached its peak.

Two national polls released on Tuesday indicate that former President Donald Trump is gaining momentum, reversing the trend seen in last week’s polls, which showed the race as nearly tied. Polls from CNBC and Rasmussen now show Trump leading Harris by 2% and 5%, respectively.

According to CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey, Trump leads Harris 48% to 46%, with a significant increase in approval for his economic policies, where voters favor him by a more than 2-to-1 margin. These results are consistent with CNBC’s July poll, which had Trump leading Biden 45% to 43%, indicating that Harris’s entry into the race has not eroded Trump’s support among swing voters.

The Rasmussen survey also shows that Trump’s support remains steady in a head-to-head matchup. However, when independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is added to the ballot, Trump’s support increases by 3% since July, reaching 49%, while Harris and Kennedy see declines of 1% and 2%, respectively. With a margin of error of +/- 2%, Trump maintains a substantial lead in this large survey.

“It’s less of a referendum on Trump now and more of a direct competition between the two candidates,” said Micah Roberts, a partner at the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, who co-conducted the CNBC survey.

Jay Campbell, a partner at Hart Research and a Democratic pollster, believes that voters see Harris as compensating for the shortcomings of her predecessor.

“She’s still carrying a lot of weight for the administration,” Campbell noted. “She needs to answer for that and carve out her own identity…That’s a lot of baggage to carry when you’re facing a well-established campaign like Trump’s in a compressed time frame.”

The economy continues to be a top concern for voters, along with immigration, both of which are areas where Trump holds significant leads. A large majority of Americans believe their financial situation would improve under a second Trump administration. Additionally, Harris faces challenges within her own party, with only 48% of Democrats thinking she would be a better economic leader, while 42% believe it would make no difference.

In 2020, then-President Trump was opposed by a small group of Republicans who turned against him through The Lincoln Project, actively supporting his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.

This time, a new organization, "Republicans For Kamala," seems to have emerged to oppose Trump. However, a newly surfaced audio recording suggests that this group may have been created by Harris’s campaign.

On Friday, the Maine Wire, a local conservative outlet, released undercover audio of a conversation between a “citizen journalist” and Peter Mills, the former executive director of the Maine Turnpike Authority and the brother of Democratic Governor Janet Mills.

In the conversation with the undercover journalist using the pseudonym “Tim Dillon,” Mills—a registered Democrat and a prominent figure in the group, as reported by the publication—expressed interest in joining it. Mills then directed him to Amy Cookson, a staffer on Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to the audio.

The former Planned Parenthood operative had an email address ending in “@kamalaharris.com.”

“I think she’s a paid worker,” Mills said. “I believe her job is to find—she’s looking—she has an organization called ‘Republicans for Harris.’” He added that she was “the main representative of that group.”

“I think it’s a national structure that’s obviously being organized by the Harris campaign,” he said.

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