President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race has propelled his vice president Kamala Harris into the thick of the election battle.
Harris has secured enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. An unofficial survey by the AP showed Harris with more than 2,500 delegates, well over the 1,976 needed to win the nomination at the Chicago convention next month. Delegates could still technically change their minds, the AP pointed out, but no other candidate received any votes in the AP survey and only 54 said they were undecided.
But securing the nomination and winning the White House are two different things and the latest poll shows Harris faces an uphill battle.
A Morning Consult poll taken after Biden ended his reelection campaign showed Trump leads Harris by 2 percentage points- 47% to 45%. The advantage is smaller, however than the 6-point margin Trump enjoyed over Biden before the president exited the race. Sixty-five percent of Democratic voters supported Harris as their party’s nominee, more than double the level of backing she had in a hypothetical look at the same question last month after Biden’s first disastrous presidential debate.
Approval ratings
Both Trump and Harris are upside down in approval ratings, meaning there are more unfavorable opinions of them than favorable. The margin is greater for Harris.
538.com’s average of all polls shows Trump’s favorability rating at 41.8% compared to an unfavorability rating of 53.7%, for a margin of 11.8%. Harris has an approval rating of 38.3% with a disapproval rating of 51.4%, for a margin of 13.1%. In comparison, Biden’s approval rating currently stands at 38.6% with disapproval at 56.2% for a margin of 17.6%.
The numbers reflect averages from 95% of national polls.