Former President Donald Trump has a two-point lead nationally over Vice President Kamala Harris — the same margin by which he led President Joe Biden before the debate — according to a McLaughlin & Associates survey, published Wednesday.
The poll finds Trump leading with 47 percent support to Harris’s 45 percent among 1,000 likely voters. Another eight percent of respondents are undecided. Trump’s two-point edge is identical to the margin by which he led Biden in McLaughlin & Associates’ June poll, conducted in the lead-up to the fateful debate that marked the demise of Biden’s political career.
In that survey, conducted June 18-24, 2024, Trump led Biden 46 percent to 44 percent. Another ten percent were undecided. Obviously, much has happened since then.
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Trump was nearly assassinated and selected his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), at the high-energy Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the same gap between polls, top Democrats, donors, and Hollywood elites forced Biden out as the presumptive nominee after his disastrous debate performance imperiled not only his reelection bid but down-ballot Democrats, followed by the left and media hyping Harris.
In other words, the poll indicates Democrats are right back where they were before the debate, when the Biden campaign trotted the president out for a June debate — an unprecedented move for an incumbent and an indicator of how dire prospects seemed for them at the time.
Of Trump supporters in this latest poll, 38 percent say they definitely support him. Six percent will probably back him, and another three percent say they lean his way. Similarly, 38 percent of Harris backers will definitely vote for her, while four percent are probably in her corner, and three percent are leaners.
Trump and Harris are neck and neck with independents at 41 percent and 40 percent, respectively. Just under one in five independents is undecided.
Trump maintains an edge over Harris in a deeper field, which includes independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others. The 45th president scores 42 percent support to Harris’s 41 percent. Kennedy garners eight percent of the response, while Libertarian Chase Oliver, the Green Party’s Jill Stein, and independent Cornel West tie at one percent.
The results from the larger field also mirror McLaughlin & Associates’ June poll, though Trump’s edge has dwindled by a marginal one point since then. He took 39 percent to Biden’s 37 percent, while Kennedy scored ten percent in that survey. West and Stein tied at two percent, Oliver took one percent, and nine percent were undecided.
The latest survey was conducted from July 23-29, 2024. A margin of error was not specified.
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