US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is leading Republican former President Donald Trump by four points in three crucial states – Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to surveys by The New York Times and Siena College.
According to the surveys conducted between August 5-9, Harris leads Trump by four percentage points in these three states, at 50 percent and 46 percent among likely voters in each state.
The margin of sampling error among likely voters was plus or minus 4.8 percentage points in Michigan, plus or minus 4.2 points in Pennsylvania and plus or minus 4.3 points in Wisconsin, the report said. In total, 1,973 likely voters were interviewed for these polls.
Democratic US President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign on July 21 and endorsed Harris for the November 5 caucus against Trump after she performed poorly in a debate against him in late June.
Harris’s ascension has injected new energy into a campaign that had been badly hampered by Democrats’ doubts about whether Biden could defeat Trump or continue to govern if he won.
US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed thousands and created a humanitarian crisis following an October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, had led to massive protests and demonstrations against the Biden administration in those states, particularly by some liberal, Muslim-American and Arab-American groups in Michigan.
Citing Gaza policy, nearly 200,000 people in these three states said they were “uncommitted” to supporting Biden in the Democratic primary. Harris has made some strong public comments on Palestinian human rights and expressed a change in tone, even though she has shown no substantive policy differences from Biden on Gaza.
Polls showed that Trump had a lead over Biden, including in battleground states, following Biden’s debate performance, but Harris’ entry into the race has changed the dynamics.
An Ipsos poll published Thursday showed Harris leading 42 percent to 37 percent nationally in the race for the Nov. 5 election. The online nationwide survey of 2,045 U.S. adults was conducted Aug. 2-7 and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
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