America's Talking - Trump, Harris Nearly Tied Nationally in New Poll

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris is nearly tied with former President Donald Trump in national polling, according to the latest survey results. A New York Times/Sienna poll released Thursday shows a near tie between Trump and Harris. The poll was conducted July 22-24, after President Joe Biden left the race, and reports Trump leads Harris 48% to 47% in the poll of likely voters and 48% to 46% among registered voters. 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 McAulam, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, July 26th. The fast-paced news cycle in this presidential election year continued this week with President Joe Biden announcing on social media that he is exiting the race and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, for the job. Harris appears to have enough delegate support to support. secure the nomination, either at the Democratic National Convention or in a roll call vote at some point

before. Joining me to discuss the shaken up presidential race is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, before we talk about how these developments change the dynamics of the race, let's start with Biden's decision. While it was historic news, it didn't come as too much of a surprise, given a growing number of prominent Democrats were calling for his exit after his disastrous debate performance in late June. What say you? This is the culmination of several very bad, terrible weeks for the Biden campaign. Of course, Biden had faced questions about his mental fitness for a long time, even since he ran against Trump, you know, in 2020. But he'd been able to stave off those concerns in large part, actually, due to his performance in the debates.

I don't know if you've remembered, Dan, but Biden was able to perform well. I think that he actually won or tied in his debates with Trump in the 2020 election. And that was what helped. I mean, I distinctly remember even, you know, some of the right, the conservative commentators on the right, like Tucker Carlson questioning what maybe it was a mistake to bring up Biden's mental fitness so much in that first election because when he performed well or adequately, it was seen as a huge success because they lowered expectations so much. And he did perform well. But in this next election, the debate at the end of last month, it was painful to watch. Immediately, Democrats and analysts and donors within the Democratic Party were all calling for Biden to step

down. He resisted, but finally relented after having some kind of a medical emergency that the White House said was COVID. It's unclear if it was just COVID or more was going on there because of just the state of the president's health. But now he's out. He's got. He's, gotten behind Kamala. And just now, I'm not sure when our listeners will hear this, but at the moment, it's very new that Kamala has secured the nomination of the Obamas, which is very big. Of course, Obama in many ways is still the figurehead of the Democratic Party, the very popular figure. And his wife, Michelle, was seen as the best threat to Donald Trump, actually. And someone who, if she had throwing her hat in the ring, could have easily unseated Kamala Harris. But for now,

she seems uninterested in doing so. So now that Kamala Harris is the presumptive nominee and is likely to face off against former President Trump, does that change the dynamics of the race significantly a little bit? How much of a threat is she to Donald Trump, who was leading in all the polls over Biden? There has been new polls come out this week since the change in Democratic candidates. What are you hearing? What are you thinking? I mean, this is an entirely new race stand.

And this is a new landscape, new candidates, new lines of attack, new demographic shifts. Everything is different. You went from a very elderly white man to a, you know, I guess, you know, half South Asian descent, half black woman who's younger, not young, but younger than Trump. And much more liberal than Biden actually was. And so it's an entirely different race. I think the attacks against Trump are largely the same because, you know, Harris has been doing that for a while, saying he's a threat to democracy, all that. She has been able to shore up

the Democratic Party leadership, at least. It remains unclear if she will be able to shore up the Democratic base. Trump has been able to really get a lot of inroads with minority voters, excuse me, with minority voters in these elections. And so it's unclear if Harris will be able to appeal to them more than Biden was because of her race. That's going to be something to watch really closely. The initial polling shows it's essentially a tied race. One is shown a little bit of Harris lead. One is shown a little bit of a Trump lead. But we're talking, you know, things that are within the margin of error for such so early on in this new race. So it's essentially tied at the national level, but Trump is winning in the key swing states, which is something he was beating Biden in the

key swing states. But Harris is performing better, but she's still not beating Trump in those swing States. And so, you know, the national polls are interesting, but what's most important is those five, six, seven states that really decide the election. And right now, right now Trump is winning them, but, you know, they haven't even debated yet. I think that debate between Harris and Trump will really define this election. They've never had to face off. And also, you know, DM before, I handed back to you. And we watched this week, the Republican Party grapple with how to respond to Harris as a candidate. Early on, they called her a DEI hire. And then some called her, you know, the most liberal U.S. Senator. I think over the last three days, it was almost like a collective huddle to get

the messaging straight and on point. And now I've seen the largely Republican messaging fall in lockstep to focus on the liberalness and the far left nature of Harris's record. She's definitely to the left of Biden. She's come out in support of, you know, the Green New Deal, things like banning plastic straws. She's been much more liberal on the energy issues, which may not matter to, you know, Californians or those in New York, but in states like Pennsylvania, it does matter a lot. And those are important swing states. So they're focusing on her liberal record. I think the Trump thing is mostly the same, but it's an entirely, an entirely new race. Yeah. And part of the focus of the last couple of days is who is Kamala Harris going to pick as her vice presidential running mate.

And it seems like the top candidates, and again, we don't know when she'll announce who she's going to select as her running mate. Again, we're recording this on Friday morning, of course, so there could be new news later today or over the weekend. We just don't know. But the top candidates are essentially from swing states. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. You just mentioned the importance of Pennsylvania, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and U.S. Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona. Now, there are other candidates that were, that their names are being dropped, but those seem to be the top three in the running right now. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, this is, of course, it's important. It's entirely speculation. I mean, we speculated

about Trump's pick, Senator J.D. Vance, Republican from Ohio, who I think was a strong pick. He has really put some intellectual backbone to Trump's movement. He's younger. I think he'll help. And he came before Harris, which is important because it doesn't feel like Trump picked Vance to respond to Harris. He set who he is, who he wants to be. And I think more importantly, he possibly selected an heir to the America First Movement, I think, because of Vance's, you know, somewhat more traditional personality of a politician combined with the America First ideology could set them up for a long, lengthening the America First legacy beyond the life of Trump. Now, when it comes to Harris, you know, what is, she has entirely different

motives. I think she, if she's smart, I think she wants to pick someone who's more moderate. Every person that's been thrown out there has essentially been a white man, which I think is interesting. I think the, the idea there is possibly she wants to even out her demographic appeal, I suppose. I don't know that that's necessarily necessary, but I know that Democrats think that way. So there's a good chance to try to even out the demographic appeal. But right now, you know, most of these governors that have been thrown out, Dan, most people don't know who they are. You can pick someone to try to win their state. You can try to pick someone from an important swing state, hoping they'll carry their state. Right now, it's a lot of speculation and a lot of names that

the American people don't recognize. And ultimately, this race is going to be about Trump and Kamala Harris. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this developing story and more at thecentersquare.com.