Donald Trump is leading his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, for the first time in weeks, according to a new poll.
The poll, conducted by CNBC between July 31 and August 4, shows that in a head-to-head matchup, Trump is leading Harris by 2 points, 48 percent to 46 percent.
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According to VoteHub, a polling aggregator, this is the first poll Trump has led against Harris since before July 26.
On July 21, Harris because the presumptive Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed her. Trump also led Biden by 2 points, 45 percent to 43 percent, in an NBC News survey in July.
While Trump’s head-to-head lead remains the same, the latest poll shows that Democrats are much more satisfied with Harris as their nominee than they were with Biden.
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According to the poll, 81 percent of Democrats are satisfied with Harris as their nominee, compared with 33 percent who were satisfied with Biden. Among Republicans, there was a 9-point gain in those satisfied with Trump as the nominee, bringing his number to 80 percent.
“It is less now a referendum on Trump than it is a head-to-head competition between the two candidates,” Micah Roberts, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies who served as the Republican pollster on the survey, told CNBC.
Roberts added that Harris still faces the challenge of being able to define herself independently from the Biden administration.
“She’s still carrying a lot of water for the administration,” he 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,” he continued.
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The poll showed that Trump is more trusted than Harris on the economy, with 40 percent of those polled saying they believed they would be better off financially under Trump, while 21 percent said they would be better off under Harris. In March, 39 percent said they would be better off under Trump, while 23 percent said they would be better off under Biden.
The poll also showed that Harris is struggling to win over her own supporters on the economy compared to Trump, with 79 percent of Republicans saying they believed their economic fortunes would improve if Trump took the White House. For Democrats, 48 percent believed they would be better off if Harris won, and 42 percent said it made no difference.
The poll of 1,001 registered voters was conducted before Harris tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate, but after Trump named Ohio Senator JD Vance as his. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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Newsweek has contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment via email.
The polls have been largely positive for Harris since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. Earlier this month, all national poll aggregators showed her in the lead. Multiple polls in battleground states have also shown her leading Trump.
However, bookmakers still believe Trump has the more favorable odds to win because of a combination of the Electoral College system, the amount of money already staked on him and some gamblers’ convictions he will make a comeback.
“Donald Trump remains a 4/5 favorite with William Hill to become the next U.S. president due to the weight of money we have taken on the Republican candidate,” William Hill spokesperson Lee Phelps previously told Newsweek.
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Pollster Nate Silver’s model, which compiles the results of statewide polls and weights them based on reliability, shows Harris is set to win the Electoral College.
According to his model, Harris has a 50.5 percent chance of winning the Electoral College in November, compared to Trump’s 54.9 percent chance.
