Where Kamala Harris has had the biggest impact on polling

Good morning and welcome to US Election Countdown. Let’s dive into:

• The latest from our poll tracker

• What to watch for at the DNC

• Harris’s digital ad spending flurry

The change in the presidential race dynamics is bearing out in the polling.

As Harris has injected new energy into the election, she’s pulled ahead in the critical battleground states of Michigan (+1.4 points) and Wisconsin (+0.6 points), according to our poll tracker, which estimates the range of probable outcomes in each state (free to view). Harris and Trump are dead even in Pennsylvania, where the former president had a 4.4-point lead over Biden.

Harris’s polling in these states put Democrats in a better position than when Biden was the nominee. But as the FT’s senior data journalist Oliver Roeder put it: “In short: the race is tied.”

Polling in all of the much-discussed battleground states is legitimately close, according to FT’s averages. There are six states polling within 2 percentage points. It’s tight, and it’s tight all over.

Harris-Trump is a completely different race than Biden-Trump, both qualitatively and quantitatively. A month ago, Trump had meaningful leads in every battleground state, and expert forecasters put his election chances near 80 per cent. Now he has meaningful leads in none of them.

Nationally, Harris has pulled ahead of Trump by 1.9 percentage points, according to our average.

“Harris’s success in closing the gap is driven by her consolidation of the Democratic base, and increased support among independent voters,” wrote Amy Walter in the Cook Political Report, which released a fresh swing state survey yesterday.

The vice-president has the support of 48 per cent of independent voters compared with Trump’s 40 per cent in a direct match-up, according to CPR. In May, Trump was 3 points ahead of Biden among such voters.

Harris is also winning over the so-called “double haters” — who disliked Biden and Trump as candidates — by 30 points, CPR found.

But Oliver also cautioned us to take polling with a grain of salt: 

Biden dropped out of the race 25 days ago. Trump was shot by a would-be assassin 33 days ago. There are 82 days until the election. A lot can and will happen, and polls are merely a snapshot in time. And polling is hard to do well.

Campaign clips: the latest election headlines

Behind the scenes

Next time you hear from us, the Democratic National Convention will be in full swing. And it’s handsomely funded too: the Host Committee raised $94mn for the convention, almost $10mn more than Republicans raised for their event last month.

The FT will have a team of reporters on the ground in Chicago, and a couple of them told me they’re particularly keen to hear how Harris talks about economic policy.  

Harris has already retooled her party’s messaging towards personal freedoms, but Washington bureau chief James Politi wonders whether she’ll go further and propose distinctive economic policies or ways of speaking about inflation:

To what extent Harris seeks some distance from [Biden] in message and policy will be key to watch. One of the most surprising aspects of current polling is that voters are not fully associating Harris with Biden or the Biden administration. Voters see her as a fresh face . . . But in order to sustain her image as spearheading a new generation of leadership, she might have to show that she has something new to offer.

US political editor Derek Brower will be looking out for whether the vice-president can put any meat on the bare bones of her policies — and if she can outline an economic vision for voters who feel forgotten and gravitate towards Trump’s populist message:

So far, all we’ve had from her are bromides and vibes and I think people will eventually get tired of this and want some meat. Biden was unable to convince people that his industrial policy, with its green hues, would help them. I’d like to see if Harris can do better in selling the signature economic strategy of the Biden-Harris administration.  

Most importantly, I am desperately hoping that Beyoncé will turn up.

Datapoints

Harris has maintained a financial advantage over Trump, and spent 10 times as much as the Republican on digital ads in the past three weeks.

She has pumped $57mn into ads on Google and Meta, while Trump has only put up about $5.6mn (free to read).

The $22.5mn that the ex-president’s campaign and its affiliated groups have spent on digital ads is less than half of Harris’s haul since she became the nominee. Together, Harris and Biden poured $139mn into digital ads this year through August 10.

The underwhelming total spent by Trump — which is down compared with 2020 — is raising eyebrows over his online strategy.

As Google’s Lee Carosi Dunn, who used to head the company’s election sales efforts, told the FT’s Alex Rogers:

All of us are unsure what’s going on — and it just doesn’t seem like they’re playing a game that is leading towards success on election day.

One of the biggest things about digital ads, in particular, is that the ads can build on themselves — you get to understand what’s working and what’s not . . . We have 80 days here. Why are you missing out on this revenue stream of small-dollar donors through digital advertising?

Viewpoints