Tipsheet

New Battleground Surveys Show Harris Closing Gap. Here's How the Trump Campaign Responded.

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  August 17, 2024 4:00 PM

The Trump-Vance campaign responded Saturday after new battleground surveys from The New York Times and Siena College found Vice President Kamala Harris closing the gap in four critical swing states. 

New polls in Arizona and North Carolina show the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee ahead of former President Donald Trump, 50 percent to 45 percent in the former among likely voters, and 49 percent to 47 percent in the latter.

Trump, meanwhile, is ahead in Georgia, 50 percent to 46 percent, and in Nevada, 48 percent to 47 percent.

Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are tied at 48 percent across an average of the four Sun Belt states in surveys conducted Aug. 8 to 15. 

That marks a significant improvement for Democrats compared with May, when Mr. Trump led Mr. Biden 50 percent to 41 percent across Arizona, Georgia and Nevada in the previous set of Times/Siena Sun Belt polls, which did not include North Carolina.

The new polls provide more evidence that Ms. Harris is successfully consolidating parts of the Democratic base that had been waffling over supporting Mr. Biden for months, particularly younger, nonwhite and female voters. […] 

The polls show some risk for Ms. Harris as she rallies Democrats to her cause, including that more registered voters view her as too liberal (43 percent) than those who say Mr. Trump is too conservative (33 percent). For now, she is edging ahead of him among critical independent voters. (NYT)

The Trump campaign responded in a memo.

The latest Sun Belt swing state polls of Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada conducted by the New York Times and Siena College are, once again, a perfect example of how wildly inaccurate recalled 2020 vote between President Trump and Joe Biden is being used to create a phony lead for Kamala Harris. 

Fortunately, they proved our case for us this week, because they actually got Georgia right: among registered voters, they have a dead-even split between President Trump and Joe Biden on the recalled 2020 vote. As a result, President Trump leads Kamala Harris by 7 points (51-44) in the 2024 head-to-head matchup among all registered voters.

Arizona and Nevada however look nothing like the 2020 reported results. If they did, President Trump would lead by 3 points (50-47) in Arizona and by 9 (53-44) in Nevada.

Even with the understatement of President Trump’s 2020 support in these key states and an unrepresentative weighting scheme relative to their Electoral Vote weights between the states surveyed, President Trump is consistently overperforming among black voters and voters aged 18-29, and has better fidelity among registered Republicans and 2020 supporters than Kamala Harris does among registered Democrats and 2020 Biden voters. 

As a reminder, four days before the 2020 election NYT / Siena polls had President Trump trailing in Arizona by 6 (49-43), and eight days before the 2020 election they had President Trump trailing in Nevada by 6(49-43). Their last Georgia poll, fifteen days before the 2020 election, showed a tied race.