Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to reenergize the Democratic Party voter base with her entry into the presidential race after Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign, but the enthusiasm may have already peaked.
Two national polls released Tuesday reveal that the former president is regaining momentum, a shift from last week’s polls that showed the race as essentially deadlocked. Surveys from CNBC and Rasmussen show Trump with leads of 2% and 5%, respectively.
CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey indicates Trump leading Harris 48% to 46%, with a significant boost in approval for his handling of the economy, where voters favor him by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Additionally, the results remain largely consistent with CNBC’s July poll, which showed Trump leading Biden 45% to 43%, suggesting that Harris’s new challenge has not diminished his support among swing voters.
The Rasmussen survey also indicates that Trump is maintaining steady support in a direct matchup. However, when independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is included on the ballot, Trump’s support rises by 3% since July to 49%, while Harris and RFK each see a decline of 1% and 2%, respectively. With a margin of error of +/- 2%, President Trump holds a substantial lead in the large survey.
“It is less now a referendum on Trump than it is a head-to-head competition between the two candidates,” said Micah Roberts, partner at the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies who helped conduct the CNBC survey.
In the eyes of voters, Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research and Democratic pollster, firmly believes that Harris is making up for her boss’s shortcomings.
“She’s still carrying a lot of water for the administration,” Campbell said. “She has to answer for that and define herself independently…That’s a lot of baggage to carry when you’ve got a compressed time frame against a mature campaign on Trump’s side.”
The economy continues to be a top concern for voters, alongside immigration, both of which are areas where President Trump holds significant leads. A large majority of Americans believe their financial situation would improve under a second Trump administration. Additionally, Harris faces a challenge within her own party, as only 48% of Democrats think she would be a better economic steward, while 42% believe it would make no difference.
In 2020, then-President Trump was confronted by a small group of alleged Republicans who turned against him and their party via The Lincoln Project and actively supported his Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
This time around, another organization appears to have popped up out of nowhere to oppose him—”Republicans For Kamala.” But, according to a newly unearthed audio recording, that group may be a creation of Harris’ campaign.
On Friday, the Maine Wire, a local conservative publication, 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 a conversation with the undercover operative using the pseudonym “Tim Dillon,” Mills — a registered Democrat and a prominent figure in the group, as noted by the publication — expressed interest in joining it. Mills then directed him to Amy Cookson, a staffer on Kamala Harris’s campaign, the audio indicates.
The former Planned Parenthood operative had an email address that ended in “@kamalaharris.com.”
“I think she’s a paid worker,” Mills said. “I think that’s her job here is to find – she’s looking – she has an organization called ‘Republicans for Harris.’” He went on to say that she was “the main representative of that group.”
“I think it’s a national structure that’s being organized by, obviously, by the Harris campaign,” he said.
