With just over two months to go until the November 5 election, Kamala Harris has managed to overtake Donald Trump nationally in the polls and is enjoying a sweet moment, with donations to the Democratic campaign at a maximum, boosted by the convention that her party held last week in Chicago, but the former Republican president is holding on in four of the seven key states for victory.
According to the average of national polls updated this Sunday by the Washington Post, Kamala Harris’ lead continues to grow and currently stands at two percentage points.
However, if state polls are taken into account, which are more representative, since in the US citizens do not directly elect their president but rather elect their “electors” or members of the Electoral College, which are distributed based on the state’s population, Trump continues to lead in 4 of the 7 most contested states.
The former Republican president (2027-2021) remains ahead in North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, although Harris has managed to close in on him by an average of three points since announcing her candidacy a month ago, following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal.
Tour of decisive Georgia
This week, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will focus on the battleground state of Georgia, which was crucial to Biden’s victory in 2020. It was the first time the state backed a Democratic presidential candidate in nearly 30 years.
Harris and Walz will conduct a bus tour, similar to the one before the convention in Pennsylvania, culminating in a rally headlined by Harris on Thursday night in the Savannah area.
For their part, Donald Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, will be in Detroit (Michigan), where they hope to win votes among workers, despite the support of the automotive industry unions for the Democrats, especially after President Biden’s historic support for strikes to demand wage increases from the three giants of the sector.
Harris is ahead in Michigan and the other two swing states where the elections will be decided: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Expected rebound after the convention
After four days of a convention in Chicago and speeches of unity around Harris from the most important figures of the party, the vice president officially accepted the nomination for president last Thursday.
These events, broadcast by the main television networks during prime time, always tend to lead to an upturn in the polls.
The Trump team was already counting on this, on this “honeymoon” phase: “Post-convention spikes are a phenomenon that occur after most party conventions (…) So don’t be surprised to see Harris get a temporary 2-3 point spike,” notes a memo distributed yesterday by the Republican campaign.
Four points ahead after Kennedy resigns
According to the Silver Bulletin website, created by Nate Silver, founder of ABC News’ FiveThirtyEight polling analysis site, Harris has taken a four-point lead in national polls after independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was dropped from the polling model after announcing last Friday that he was quitting his campaign to support Trump.
Their latest average shows Harris with 48.8% of the votes and Donald Trump with 44.8%.
Record number of donations
Harris is also having a sweet run in terms of fundraising. The campaign said Sunday that it has raised $540 million in the past month, “a record for any campaign in history.”
In the three days since his acceptance speech on Thursday alone, he has raised $40 million.
By comparison, the campaign of former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump (2017-2021) has reported raising about $139 million in July and had accumulated about $327 million by the beginning of August.
