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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
US vice-president Kamala Harris has now secured enough delegates to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic party’s presidential candidate against Donald Trump in this year’s election.
The question is how she would fare against Trump in November’s election.
A poll on Monday by Morning Consult, the first to be carried out since Biden dropped out of the race, gave Trump a two-point lead over Harris, at 47 per cent to 45 per cent. It was down sharply from the six-point advantage the former president enjoyed over the 81-year-old incumbent.
The survey also found that more Democratic voters now feel strongly motivated to vote than Republicans, by 27 per cent to 24 per cent.
Trump remains a clear but not prohibitive favourite to win back the White House, according to prediction markets, but Harris’s odds have narrowed.
Over the 24 hours to midday Tuesday EST, the implied probability of a Harris victory had risen from 38 per cent to 43 per cent, according to the political prediction market PredictIt. The likelihood of Trump prevailing fell from 60 per cent to 55 per cent.
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A Financial Times average of polls taken before Harris secured the nomination shows her trailing Trump by 3 percentage points, a gap that has tightened in recent weeks.
But notes of caution are needed: most Harris-Trump polls to date concern a once-hypothetical match-up rather than the actual, contested campaign unfolding now.
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Biden and Harris have had similar approval ratings, which have moved together over the course of Biden’s term, with Harris typically lagging somewhat below the president.
That has changed in recent days, with Biden hitting a personal record-low approval rating, according to averages from FiveThirtyEight.
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With more than 100 days until the US election on November 5, the data above will certainly change and change again — perhaps dramatically, if recent history is any guide.
As Harris herself said, Monday was “the first full day of our campaign”.
Additional research by Jonathan Vincent and John Burn-Murdoch
