After two weeks of batting back a rise in the polls by Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump is now enjoying a resurgence of his own.
Two national polls released Tuesday show the former president clawing to the front once more, a change from polls last week indicating the race was essentially deadlocked. Surveys from CNBC and Rasmussen give Trump leads of 2% and 5%, respectively. The All-America Economic Survey by CNBC showed Trump ahead of Harris 48% to 46%, and voters are giving him a massive endorsement on handling of the economy, preferring him by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Another good sign for Trump: the results are virtually unchanged from CNBC’s July poll when he led President Joe Biden 45% to 43%, suggesting Vice President Harris’s new rivalry hasn’t dented his standing among swing voters.
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The Rasmussen survey also shows Trump maintaining a level amount of support in a head-to-head matchup. But in a scenario where independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is on the ballot, the former president’s support increased by 3% since July to 49% while Harris and RFK lost 1% and 2%, respectively. With a margin of error of +/- 2%, President Trump is well ahead in the large survey.
“It is less now a referendum on Trump than it is a head-to-head competition between the two candidates,” said Micah Roberts, partner at the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies who helped conduct the CNBC survey. Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research who served as the Democratic pollster, added that Harris is making up for the sins of her boss in the eyes of voters. “She’s still carrying a lot of water for the administration,” Campbell said. “She has to answer for that and define herself independently…That’s a lot of baggage to carry when you’ve got a compressed time frame against a mature campaign on Trump’s side.”
The economy remains front and center for voters and ranks at or near the top of the list alongside immigration, both issues where President Trump holds commanding leads. A large majority of Americans believe their pocketbooks and bank accounts will be better off under a second Trump administration, and even worse for Harris is data showing just 48% of Democrats believe she would be a better economic steward while 42% believe it makes no difference.
Before Harris’s entrance into the race, only a minuscule number of voters remained undecided between Trump and Biden; now the number of undecided independent voters has risen to 20%. The campaign that is most successful in courting this sliver of the electorate may ultimately come out the winner in November.
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