A shocking Wall Street Journal poll showed the Democratic candidate in the presidential race leading for the first time in 18 months.
Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump 48% to 47%, according to the poll in a head-to-head test of the two candidates, and she leads 47% to 45% when independent and third-party candidates were included.
It’s a stark contrast to when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee and consistently trailed Trump in the polls.
Friday’s poll of the The Wall Street Journal It was the first time the Democratic nominee had held a lead since April of last year. Trump held a 2-point lead over Harris in the Journal’s head-to-head poll in late July.
Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in new Wall Street Journal poll – first time Democrat has led in 16 months
The newspaper conducted the poll after the Democratic National Convention concluded. Harris was expected to emerge ahead after the event.
But she is also leading Trump in the RealClearPolitics poll average, by almost two points.
The race appears tighter when looking at polls in the battleground states.
TO Emerson College/The Hill Poll Results released Thursday show Harris and Trump are tied.
Of the seven states in contention, Trump wins in Arizona, North Carolina and Wisconsin, Harris wins in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada and the front-runners tie in Pennsylvania.
A deeper analysis of Wall Street Journal polls shows some warning signs for the Trump campaign.
Harris’s numbers remain high despite Trump’s repeated attacks on her.
Both parties are pushing to define Harris, who became the nominee just a month ago. Much of last week’s Democratic National Convention focused on introducing her to voters.
About 84% of respondents said they knew enough about Harris to have a strong opinion of her, and 49% have a favorable opinion of her, equal to the share with an unfavorable opinion.
About 45% had a favorable view of Trump and 53% had an unfavorable view.
The biggest warning for the Trump campaign, however, may be the economic numbers.
Trump has an 8-point lead over Harris when voters are asked who would better handle the economy and a 5-point lead on handling inflation.
But by late last year, Trump was leading Biden by about 20 points on both issues.
That suggests Harris is making progress on the issue and that, despite the Trump campaign’s efforts, voters are not criticizing her for Biden’s handling of the economy even though she is his vice president.
The economy is Harris’ biggest vulnerability. Voters are angry about the high cost of food, gas and housing. Biden received very low marks for his handling of inflation and that dragged down his overall approval ratings.
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Harris defended her and Biden’s work on the economy, arguing that the COVID pandemic and Trump left them in a difficult situation.
“When Joe Biden and I took office during the height of the pandemic, we saw more than 10 million jobs lost,” she said. “On that day, hundreds of people were dying from COVID; the economy had largely collapsed due to Donald Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis. When we took office, our top priority was to do what we could to rescue America.”
Donald Trump’s arguments about Kamala Harris don’t seem to hold up, poll finds
But when asked why she hadn’t implemented any of the policy ideas she was pushing as part of her campaign when she was vice president, Harris, again, returned to the pandemic: “We had to bounce back as an economy and we have. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done to get inflation down to below 3%.”
He went on to note that the Biden administration had reduced the cost of insulin, created more than 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, renewed the child tax credit and improved the supply chain.
The Wall Street Journal poll also looked at his running mates.
Voters were found to view Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, more favorably than unfavorably, 46% to 40%.
Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, was seen as more unfavorable than favorable, 50% to 40%.
