A New York Times/Siena College poll found that support for Vice President Kamala Harris’ election bid may be plateauing. According to the poll, voters are leaning more towards voting for Donald Trump by a small margin. Forty-seven percent of people prefer Harris and 48% favor Trump, The New York Times reported.
An almost equal amount of Republicans (31%), Democrats (29%), and independents (32%) responded to the survey.
Times writer Nate Cohn suggests there may be a couple of factors at play that would explain the results, including less coverage of Harris’ campaign following the Democratic National Convention and a lack of other polls that could show whether this poll was an outlier.
Cohn also notes that Trump’s gain is evidence of his strengths in the upcoming election. For one thing, his popularity has increased from the levels he enjoyed in each of the last two elections. Voters see him as a candidate for change, and respondents to the poll think Trump will bring a “major change” from the Biden administration.
For 56% of respondents, Harris represents “more of the same,” a continuation of the Biden era. For Trump, that number was 35%.
Half of the poll’s respondents also saw Trump as being better on the issues that matter most to them, while only 43% thought the same of Harris.
While August was a high for Harris’ campaign and the past month and a half has seen scores of Americans showing their support, a portion of voters feel like they need to get to know her better before casting their vote for her in November. The poll found that amount to be 28%, to be exact, worse than Trump’s 9%. Only this week did Harris unveil a section on her website dedicated to issues, and voters aren’t clear on where she stands.
Though these results mark the first major departure from the narrative that Harris leads Trump in polls, others have not echoed these findings. Cohn advises readers to remain cautious in their evaluations.