America's Talking - New Poll: Trump Leads Harris by 4 Points Nationally

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

President Donald Trump outperforms Vice President Kamala Harris in a head-to-head matchup, according to a new poll. The Harvard/Harris poll released Tuesday was taken after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and asked respondents: “If the 2024 election for President were held today and it was between Donald Trump, the Republican and Kamala Harris, the Democrat, who would you vote for?” Results showed Trump beats Harris by four points, 52% to 48%. Other polls in the short time since Harris kicked off her presidential bid have showed a tie or slight edge for Trump. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAaleb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, August 2nd. It was another busy week in the campaign for president, as Kamala Harris inches closer to the official Democratic nomination, a virtual roll call is ongoing with nearly 4,700 Democratic delegates, voting virtually to to notify Harris's nomination. And Republican former President Donald Trump attacks what he says are the current vice president's policy failures from years past.

Joining me to discuss all things presidential election is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the center square. Casey, there's so many directions we could go here. Where do you want to start? Yeah, I mean, we could start with the polling, I think. That's where you have to start in a horse race. What does it look like? And, you know, Dan, I'm following this daily here in D.C.

and it seems like every day there's some new poll that comes out and someone declares that this is the state of the election. Trump holds a slight lead nationally or Harris is leading. And my takeaway, you know, about, you know, almost, but not quite, almost two weeks into this race is that this is a tie at the national level. Some polls seem to show Harris leading just a bit. Others show Trump leading a little bit more. and then a few seem to show a tie. And so that tells me that nationally we have a tie. Now, in the battleground states, there can be a different picture.

We don't have as much as many reliable polls in those battleground states yet. And of course, in the electoral college, that's what it all comes down to. Now, that battleground state issue takes us to the vice presidential candidate issue, Dan. J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator for Trump, I think he's had a bit of a rocky start. getting into this campaign. As Kamala Harris has, he's taken fire for past comments he made, past stances he's taken. You know, Harris has taken fire for defund the police comments since she announced her run. And Vance has taken fire for some comments around, you know, abortion or around, you know, children and different things, like tax policies for children.

And so that makes Harris's vice presidential pick really important, of course, a lot of people are thinking she might pick Shapiro out of Pennsylvania because she wants those Midwestern states. She wants Pennsylvania, you know. So I think that nationally, this looks like a tie in the battleground states. It looks like there's too much fog of war and things to be not yet determined. We've seen Vance having a little bit of a tough, tough start here, but I do think he still has a bright future in the Republican Party. He's just getting a level of national attention he's not used to. And the next big newspeg here, Dan, is who is Kamala going to pick for her VP? So we're just a few weeks, a couple weeks away from the Democratic National Convention,

which will be in Chicago this month. Casey, we're still waiting, as you mentioned, on Kamala Harris's VP pick. Do you expect to get that in the coming days by Monday early next week? Do we have any idea there? I'm invited to put money on it. I would say next week, we're going to find that out. I think she wants to have that settled, then have a big, you know, to help build momentum, pick a good candidate, go into this convention with her VP, with her delegates, and spike the football at this convention. She's the presumptive Democratic nominee. There's no question about that, but she does need to cement it to dot the eyes and cross the T's at the convention in August. And I think the Harris playbook right now is to not make any big mistakes. She's doing pretty well, doing much better than Biden. was doing. The media is kind of covering for her in a way that I've never seen in a long time,

maybe since Obama. But Obama was a great candidate, a much stronger candidate than Harris is. And so she has, like, a widespread support from the media. And I think that's because the media feels responsible for taking Biden down, especially the kind of mainstream media and traditionally left-leaning media. They went really hard to remove Biden after the debate. And, and they were kind of uncharacteristically critical of him. And then when he finally did remove Harris steps up to replace him. And I think they feel kind of this obligation to, you know, make sure that they're not the reason that Trump gets elected. I know this, I know some of these people, this is how they think.

And for instance, after 2016, when Trump won, they felt very responsible for getting Trump elected because of how they covered him, you know, how they gave him so much attention. And so we saw on the next election, they ignored Trump. much more because they felt that responsibility. So I think we're seeing that with Harris. If she picks a good VP, she does well in this debate. It's going to be a competitive race for her. And I think she has a good chance of winning right now, actually. Nothing would surprise me the way this entire campaign season has gone on.

Casey, if you referenced President Biden, who just weeks ago was the presumptive Democratic nominee. He's largely disappeared. We don't hear from him much about. anything anymore. There were questions when he initially exited the race a couple of weeks ago via social media, not via announcement, not via public appearance or anything like that. There were questions about his health. Of course, there's been ongoing questions on his health. How much do if a factor do you think President Biden will be in this newly constituted race? Yeah, if Democrats have their way, he'll be no factor at all. I think they're ready to kind

of just put him out to the retirement home and let him, you know, and the media, I think, is willing to do that too. They've moved on. They're not criticizing Biden. Even Republicans are largely not talking about Biden or his record anymore. You're not hearing about Hunter Biden's laptop or any of these investigations. Everyone, I think, has moved on and is willing to give Biden a pass. Now, he's sort of reinserted himself into the news cycle by going for the Supreme Court reform. And I think he is trying to save his legacy by doing that. He's trying to appease the liberals who, um, who've wanted Supreme Court reform for a few years now. Ever since, you know, there's more conservative justices.

They've become very passionate about Supreme Court reform and term limits. But, you know, Biden is doing things like that, which are controversial. I don't think he's going to get, that's not going to happen this term. You know, Congress is going to be focused on recess and campaigning. But he might be laying some policy framework that Harris could pick up and run with if she does win. And I think if, you know, Democrats do get, you know, all three branches, they would, or, you know, House Senate and presidency, I think they'd be very interested in changing the Supreme Court. But right now they don't have that. So it's kind of an irrelevant proposal at the moment.

So I think Biden is just riding into the sunset and trying to preserve his legacy. And you saw that even when he gave his White House address where he nominated Harris informally, but he passed the torch to Harris, as he called it. He spent much of that speech, yeah, he spent much of that speech talking about his own record. and things that he had done well across his entire political career. So it seems that he's very concerned about how he's perceived and his legacy as he leaves the White House, a one-term president. Well, it is still early August. We have three long months of this campaign left to go with all the twists and turns that we've already seen.

Who knows where that next twist or turn is going to come from? Thank you for joining us today. Casey, listeners can keep up with all presidential campaign news and more. more at the center square.com.