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Kamala Harris’s rise in the polls has allowed her to reduce Donald Trump’s large lead in Texas, a reliably Republican state.
The Democratic candidate is just five points behind the former president, according to a new poll conducted by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs.
In June, the gap between Trump and President Joe Biden was nine points, according to the same pollster.
This comes after Harris has taken a lead over Trump in many national and state polls since Biden ended his re-election campaign last month.
But the numbers in Texas will give a big boost to Democrats since the state has not given its Electoral College votes to its candidates since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
A new poll shows Kamala Harris has narrowed Donald Trump’s lead in Texas. In June, she was leading Joe Biden by nine points. Now her lead is less than five points.
The poll found that 49.5 percent of likely voters intend to vote for Trump, compared to 44.6 percent for Harris.
However, Harris’ campaign has already signaled that it will focus resources elsewhere, in part because of the high cost of advertising in the state.
“At the end of the day, our responsibility as a presidential campaign is to make sure we get to 270 (electoral votes),” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said at an event at the Democratic National Convention.
“I would love to get to a higher number, but that’s all we care about.”
Harris has eliminated Trump’s six-point lead among women over the past two months.
However, it still maintains an 18-point lead among men.
In the U.S. Senate race, 46.6 percent of likely Texas voters intend to vote for Republican Ted Cruz, while 44.5 percent say they support Democrat Colin Allred. These proportions have not changed much from the June poll.
Harris has just enjoyed a week in the spotlight. She was crowned by her party at the convention in Chicago.
Kamala Harris may have narrowed Donald Trump’s lead in the polls in Texas, but her campaign says it will focus on other areas, in part because it is so expensive to buy advertising in the state.
His campaign hopes this will translate into a further boost in the polls.
Trump spent the week traveling through battleground states to deliver a series of policy speeches.
On Monday he was in Pennsylvania to talk about the economy. On Tuesday he was in Michigan and talked about law and order.
On Wednesday, it was a matter of national security in North Carolina, and a day later it was at the border in Arizona.
A DailyMail.com poll shows he is set to benefit from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to suspend his campaign on Friday.