- The state of the race has continued to change after Joe Biden dropped out
Donald Trump is still trying to come to terms with the fact that he will face a very different race than he did just two months ago and that his new opponent is far more popular than President Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris has seen a double-digit surge in popularity since announcing her candidacy to replace Biden in the 2024 presidential race after polls repeatedly showed her to be a highly unpopular vice president.
His favorability increased a whopping 16 points since July, according to A new NBC News poll released Sunday, marking the biggest increase for any politician since George W. Bush took office following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Harris also regained seven points in the race since Biden faced Trump in July.
New poll shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 7 points compared to where Joe Biden stood against the former president before he dropped out of the race in July
With just six weeks until Election Day, Harris holds a 49 percent to 44 percent lead among registered voters who want to cast their ballots for her instead of Trump — still within the margin of error for this poll.
Earlier this summer, before Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, Trump led the president by 2 points in a poll conducted by the same pollster.
The former president is now 5 points behind, which is the difference in advantage he had over Biden in January of this year.
While Trump is trailing Harris overall in the latest NBC polls, he still holds leads over her in some key areas, such as the economy and inflation.
Two-thirds of voters say their family’s income is below the cost of living.
And voters continue to rank the rising cost of living in the United States as their top concern ahead of the November election.
Harris has seen a double-digit rise in popularity since moving from just vice president to Democratic presidential candidate for 2024.
In April, 23 percent of respondents said inflation and the economy were their top concerns in the 2024 election. And in the latest poll, conducted Sept. 13-17, 28 percent said the same.
Threats to democracy are now the second most important issue since Harris became the nominee against Trump, with 19 percent saying their top concern is this issue.
Immigration and the situation at the southern border fell from second to third place between April and September, with just 14 percent ranking it as the No. 1 concern now, compared with 22 percent in the spring.