A new survey has found that, while Vice President Kamala Harris is slightly ahead of former President Donald Trump nationally, she failed to secure a polling bump from the Democratic National Convention.
The poll, released on Sunday, was conducted by ABC News/Ipsos and found Harris leading Trump 50 percent to 46 percent among registered voters nationwide. The Harris edge widened among likely voters 52 percent to 46 percent.
However, the pollsters discovered that while Harris holds a national lead, she did not see any boost from her party’s four-day convention in Chicago. Additionally, the poll indicated that former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Trump had little impact, though internal polling by the Trump campaign says that RFK Jr.’s support has moved the needle for the former president, especially in key states.
The poll noted further:
New ABC News/Ipsos polling conducted after the Democratic National Convention finds Vice President Kamala Harris has a slight lead over former President Donald Trump among Americans who plan to vote in November’s election, statistically unchanged from earlier in August. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s departure from the race and endorsement of Trump makes no difference to most Americans. On the topic of campaigns, a majority feel Harris is running her campaign well, while fewer feel the same about Trump. However, Americans continue to trust Trump more than Harris on the economy, inflation, and immigration.
Nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polling, Harris leads Trump by 1.8 points. She is up by a much smaller margin—0.3 percent—in the average of battleground state polling, according to RCP.
That said, Trump currently garners 291 electoral votes to Harris’ 208, with 111 so far undecided, according to the analytical site. The Senate currently favors Republicans over Democrats 50-46, with four seats listed as toss-ups, RCP noted.
A lot is likely riding on the debate between the two candidates scheduled for Sept. 10.
When former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was a Democrat, she stirred controversy by criticizing then-California Sen. Harris’s prosecutorial record during their 2020 presidential primary debate. Now, Gabbard is advising Trump to focus on Harris’s character in his upcoming debate.
“It’s about her character,” Gabbard said during an interview with the Washington Examiner. “That was really what I exposed in that debate in 2019 when we were both candidates running for president, was her hypocrisy and how she would say one thing and do another.
“She would hold people, the people, to one standard and hold herself to a different standard. I challenged her on the record that she claimed to be proud of, and she had nothing to say to defend that record. Not much has changed between then and now,” Gabbard continued.
Gabbard’s advice contrasts with that of other Trump supporters, who are urging the former president to focus on criticizing Harris’s policies rather than her character. However, speaking at the Moms for Liberty National Summit in Washington, the Army Reserve officer argued that Trump could effectively address both aspects.
“If I can be helpful to him in any way, it really is just sharing the experience that I’ve had with her on the debate stage and how she will try to hide, deflect away from, distract away from the truth, the truth about who she is and her record, and the fact that the policies, at least so far that she has talked about just a little bit, stand diametrically opposed to her record,” she said.
“She is a fake person who cannot be trusted and who cares only about herself and her political ambition and not about the American people,” Gabbard continued.
During the interview, Gabbard offered few specifics about her role in Trump’s debate preparation for his September 10th matchup with Harris on ABC. Trump himself told reporters this week that he is “not spending a lot of time on it.”