Where Kamala Harris Had the Biggest Impact on the Polls

Good morning and welcome to US lesson Countdown. Let’s dive into:

• The latest from our tracker survey

• What to Watch at the DNC

• Harris’ Digital Ad Spending Flurry

The changing dynamics of the presidential race are being reflected in the polls.

As Harris injected new energy into the election, she surged ahead in the key states of Michigan (+1.4 points) and Wisconsin (+0.6 points), according to our poll, which estimates the range of likely outcomes in each state (available for free). Harris and Trump are tied in Pennsylvania, where the former president had a 4.4-point lead over Biden.

Harris’s polls in these states have put Democrats in a better position than when Biden was the nominee. But as Oliver Roeder, the Vscek’s senior data reporter, said: “In short: the race is tied.”

Polls in all the hotly debated key states are legitimately tight, according to Vscek averages. There are six states polling within 2 percentage points. It’s tight, and it’s tight everywhere.

Harris-Trump is a completely different race than Biden-Trump, both qualitatively and quantitatively. A month ago, Trump had a significant lead in every swing state, and forecasters estimated his chances of being elected at close to 80 percent. Now he has no significant lead in any of them.

Nationally, Harris led Trump by 1.9 percentage points, according to our average.

“Harris’s success in closing the gap is due to a solidifying Democratic base and growing support among independent voters,” Amy Walter wrote in the Cook Political Report, which released a new poll of swing states yesterday.

The vice president has the support of 48 percent of independent voters compared to Trump’s 40 percent in a head-to-head matchup, according to CPR. In May, Trump was 3 points ahead of Biden among those voters.

Harris is also winning over so-called “double-haters” (who disliked either Biden or Trump as candidates) by 30 points, CPR found.

But Oliver also warned us not to take the polls with a grain of salt:

Biden dropped out of the race 25 days ago. Trump was shot by a potential assassin 33 days ago. There are 82 days until the election. A lot can and will happen, and polls are just a snapshot in time. And polls are hard to do well.

Campaign Clips: The Latest Election News

Behind the scenes

The next time you hear from us, the Democratic National Convention will be in full swing. And it’s well-funded: The Host Committee has raised $94 million for the convention, nearly $10 million more than the Republicans raised for their event last month.

The Vscek will have a team of reporters in Chicago, and a couple of them told me they are particularly interested in hearing how Harris talks about economic policy.

Harris has already retooled her party’s message toward personal freedoms, but Washington bureau chief James Politi wonders whether she will go further and propose specific economic policies or ways of talking about inflation:

To what extent does Harris try to distance himself from [Biden] in message and policy will be key to watch. One of the most striking aspects of current polling is that voters don’t fully associate Harris with Biden or the Biden administration. Voters see her as a fresh face… But to sustain her image as spearheading a new generation of leadership, she may have to prove she has something new to offer.

US political editor Derek Brower will try to understand if the vice president can make her policies concrete and if she can outline an economic vision for voters who feel forgotten and who gravitate toward Trump’s populist message:

So far, all we’ve gotten from her are platitudes and vibes, and I think eventually people will get tired of all that and want some meat. Biden has failed to convince people that his green-tinged industrial policy is going to help them. I’d like to see Harris do a better job of selling the Biden-Harris administration’s signature economic strategy.

The most important thing is that I really hope Beyoncé shows up.

Data points

Harris has maintained a financial advantage over Trump and has spent 10 times more than the Republican on digital advertising in the last three weeks.

He invested $57 million in advertising on Google and Meta, while Trump only invested about $5.6 million (available for free).

The $22.5 million that the former president’s campaign and its affiliated groups have spent on digital ads is less than half of Harris’s haul since she became a candidate. Together, Harris and Biden have spent $139 million on digital ads this year through Aug. 10.

Trump’s disappointing overall spending, down from 2020, is raising questions about his online strategy.

As Lee Carosi Dunn, a former campaign sales manager at Google, told the Vscek’s Alex Rogers:

None of us know exactly what is going on, and it doesn’t look like they are playing a game that will lead to success on Election Day.

One of the great things about digital advertising, in particular, is that the ads are self-building: you can figure out what works and what doesn’t… We have 80 days. Why are we missing out on this revenue stream of small donors through digital advertising?

Points of view