A CBS News/You Gov poll released on Sunday showed Vice President Kamala Harris 1 point ahead of former President Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup, and 2 points ahead when third-party candidates were added to the mix.
This was a big change from a CBS poll released two weeks ago – before President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race – that showed Trump up by 3 points in a two-way race.
The addition of the CBS survey to the RealClearPolitics average of head-to-head polls narrows Trump’s lead to 0.8 percent, down from a 1.6 percent lead the day after Harris launched her presidential campaign.
Unbelievably, Harris has taken a narrow lead for the first time in the RealClearPolitics average of five-way polls. She is now up by 0.2 percent.
On Saturday night, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and CNN contributor David Axelrod joined anchor Jessica Dean on “CNN Newsroom” to discuss Harris’s undeniable momentum in her race against Trump.
Despite Harris’s strong polling results, Dean acknowledged “[T]his is still a really tight race. This is going to be a hard fight for either side – tough based on the numbers we’re seeing right now.”
Agreeing with his colleague “100 percent,” Axelrod said, “There’s a lot of irrational exuberance on the Democratic side of the aisle right now because there was despair for some period of time about what November was going to look like.”
Noting that Democrats now “feel like there’s a chance,” he was clear that “it is absolutely Trump’s race to lose right now. He is ahead and he is ahead in most of the battleground states. They are close, they can be won by either candidate.” (Emphasis added.)
Summing up, Axelrod said, “So yes, I think it’s a wide-open race, but Trump has the advantage right now and … everybody should be sober about that on the Democratic side.”
(Relevant segment begins at 3:30 in the video below.)
Trump’s polling results are likely to get worse before they get better. Excitement over Harris’s impending VP pick has already boosted her support. Harris will reveal her running mate on Tuesday at a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, rally. The pair will then embark upon a four-day “blitz” in the battleground states. On August 19, the Democratic National Convention will begin in Chicago. Harris, like most candidates, can expect a post-convention bounce in the polls.
From there, however, it gets trickier.
Becoming the Democratic presidential nominee so late in the game has worked to Harris’s advantage. It has limited the amount of time for the (conservative) press to properly vet her and minimized the number of occasions when Harris will be required to speak extemporaneously because that’s when she gets into trouble – as she did on Thursday night.
Biden and Harris traveled to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to welcome home newly freed Russian prisoners Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, and Alsu Kurmasheva. The vice president was unscripted and, yes, it was a mess.
Harris told reporters: “This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy.”
Below, she is asked by a reporter what she will do to address inflation:
Sooner or later, Harris will have to face reporters. She will also (likely) face Trump on a debate stage. If Trump can remain disciplined, share his vision for a second term, ask voters if they were better off four years ago than they are now, and simply let Harris be Harris, he can regain his lead in this race.
And Harris will be forced to make her case in her own words. My guess is that voters will be shocked by her inadequate communications skills.
They may also be surprised by her arrogant demeanor. Aside from the fly that landed on then-Vice President Mike Pence’s head (and stayed for two minutes) during the 2020 vice presidential debate, the biggest takeaway had been Harris’s imperious behavior, her frequent reminders to Pence of “I’m speaking. I’m speaking.”
Harris’s honeymoon can’t go on forever. Voters will see for themselves that she is the same unlikable, inauthentic, and not very bright candidate who was forced to drop out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary before a single vote was cast.
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Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a research fellow at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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