The polls have been released and Kamala Harris has closed the gap on Donald Trump.
A combined seven national polls conducted since Harris announced her candidacy for president on Sunday after Joe Biden dropped out of the race have cut the Democratic lead by about half, and several closely watched polls, including one released Friday by The Wall Street Journal, have her statistically tied with the former president.
A New York Times/Siena poll conducted Thursday found that Harris had a lead of 6 to 7 percentage points depending on whether third parties were included.
Harris's rise in support has come in large part from parts of the Democratic coalition unhappy with Biden: A New York Times poll from a month ago found the 81-year-old president had just 59% of registered black voters, while Harris won 69%. She also increased her party's share of Hispanic voters from 45% to 57%, and voters under 30 from 46% to 56%.
A Wall Street Journal poll showed similar trends, spurring support for the Democratic Party: Just a month ago, only 37% of Biden supporters were enthusiastic about his candidacy, but now 81% of Harris supporters say they are.
For Trump, who officially became the Republican nominee at last week's convention, a lot has changed in the polls over the past month. His favorability ratings have risen since the July 13 assassination attempt, but the party's nominee had come to hope for a “pumping up” after the convention, but those hopes have faded since Biden dropped out of the race.
The Trump campaign has sought to downplay the change, warning supporters in a memo on Tuesday that Democrats will be in for a “Harris honeymoon” at the polls.
“Clearly, the situation we find ourselves in is completely uncharted territory and unprecedented in modern history,” the Trump campaign wrote in a “confidential memo” hastily sent out as a press release. “There is no question that Ms. Harris will see a rise in her ratings faster than the Democratic National Convention, and that this will begin to occur in the coming days and continue for some time until the race settles down.”
The major polling averages from RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight can be slow to react to news as new polls trickle in and replace older polls in their samples.
An unweighted average of only polls conducted after Biden dropped out of the race puts Harris 1.6 percentage points behind Trump. If you exclude the Rasmussen Reports poll, which has consistently been the most pro-Trump poll in the RealClearPolitics sample, Trump's lead shrinks to about half that amount.
Several surveys in battleground states have shown similar patterns, including Emerson College polls in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that show Harris's approval rating is 3 to 4 percentage points higher than Biden's in the previous Emerson College poll conducted just a week ago.