Kamala Harris led Donald Trump in a national poll conducted two days after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.
The vice president has taken a national lead over her Republican rival after securing enough delegates to be named the Democratic nominee at the party’s convention in Chicago next month.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Harris leading Trump by 2 percent in a head-to-head general election matchup as she enters the campaign trail in place of Biden, an ailing 81-year-old.
This follows a series of other polls conducted in the days surrounding the bombshell news that put the former president ahead of Harris in the race for the spot behind the Resolute Desk.
Several polls conducted amid President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his reelection bid show Kamala Harris trailing Donald Trump in the 2024 race, but one released Tuesday finally showed the vice president pulling ahead of the former president.
In a July 1-2 poll by the same service with the same margin of error, Trump had a 1 percent lead over Harris, and in a July 15-16 poll they were tied at 44 percent.
Now that Harris is running for president instead of Biden, her odds have changed, leading Trump by 44 percent to 42 percent.
When independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was added to the poll, Harris’s lead widened to four points: 42 percent to 38 percent.
The first batch of national polls released after Harris entered the race showed Trump beating the vice president.
A Morning Consult poll conducted the same day, and immediately after Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, shows Trump leading Harris 47 percent to 45 percent.
Two other polls conducted between Friday and Sunday showed Trump with a lead of up to 9 percentage points, a larger gap than his lead with Biden.
The dramatic results of the poll were reflected in the betting markets, which made the Republican the clear favorite to win the election in November.
Kamala Harris made her first solo presidential campaign remarks in Wisconsin on Tuesday after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The Morning Consult poll also found that 65 percent of Democrats support Harris replacing Biden at the top of the party ticket.
The survey showed that 63 percent of Americans think Biden should serve out the remainder of his term, while 30 percent said he should resign now.
Biden withdrew four days after he was removed from the campaign trail during a visit to Nevada following a positive COVID-19 test.
He has been secluded at his $3.4 million beach house in Delaware.
White House physician Kevin O’Connor has issued daily updates on the president’s condition but has not been seen publicly since the diagnosis Wednesday.
Some Republicans are demanding that the president provide “proof of life.”
Biden is scheduled to return to Washington, D.C. from Delaware on Tuesday afternoon. It would be his first time out in six days.
Just moments after posting his one-page letter to X on Sunday announcing he was stepping aside, Biden sent out a follow-up tweet endorsing his vice president to take over his campaign.
On Monday, Harris secured enough delegate support to clinch the nomination at the Democratic National Convention next month.
Quinnipiac University released a poll the day after Biden dropped out, conducted from Friday to Sunday, that had Trump ahead in a head-to-head with Harris by 2 percent.
But when registered voters were asked to also consider other candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein, Trump was ahead by 4 points with 45 percent, over Harris, who came in second with 41 percent.
Trump (pictured at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday) has a lead of at least 2 points over Harris and as much as 9 percent.
The largest gap between the vice president and the former president was 9 percent in a Forbes/HarrisX poll, which like the Quinnipiac poll was conducted two days before and on the same day as Biden’s withdrawal on Sunday.
Trump got 50 percent in that poll, compared to Harris’s 41 percent.
Another Point Politics/SoCal Research poll, conducted the day Biden stepped aside, found 51 percent of voters backing Trump and 43 percent backing Harris.
The vice president has seen a surge in fundraising. In the seven hours after Biden dropped out of the race, Democratic fundraising surged by a record $46.4 million.
