Kamala Harris leads Trump in new poll after Biden dropout

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 22, 2024. Harris on Monday compared her election rival Donald Trump to “predators” and “cheaters,” as she attacked the first former US leader to be convicted of a crime. (AFP)

WASHINGTON – US Vice President KamalaHarris   is narrowly beating rival Donald Trump in a national presidential poll released Tuesday, one of the first conducted since US President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign.

Harris holds a two-point lead over Trump, 44 percent to 42 percent, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. It was conducted in the two days after Biden announced Sunday he was dropping out of the race and endorsing his vice president.

In the previous week’s poll, Harris, 59, and Trump, now the elder in the presidential race at 78, were tied at 44 percent.

Harris, the overwhelming frontrunner for the Democratic nomination who is raking in endorsements and donations as well as pledged delegates, narrowly trails Republican flag-bearer Trump in another survey also released Tuesday. 

Both results are within the polls’ margins of error.

The new surveys followed both the Republican National Convention, where Trump formally accepted the party’s presidential nomination, and Biden’s leaving the race. 

Harris’s performance in the polls, bolstered by the excitement among Democratic voters about the shakeup in the race, shows her apparently neutralizing the bounce that a nominee gets in the days after his or her party’s nominating convention.

In a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll conducted Monday, Trump edges Harris with 46 percent to 45 percent of US registered voters, with nine percent undecided.

If third-party candidates or independents are included in the contest, Trump and Harris are tied at 42 percent, with the others far behind.

The PBS News survey notably found that 87 percent of all Americans think Biden’s decision to drop out was the right move, a view that crossed partisan and generational lines.

A plurality of respondents (41 percent) said Biden’s decision increases Democrats’ chances of winning in November, compared to 24 percent who said it decreases the party’s odds and 34 percent who said it makes no difference.

Both surveys come in the aftermath of Trump surviving a shock assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13.

Trump maintains a very narrow advantage of 1.6 percentage points against Harris, according to an average of polls collated by RealClearPolitics.