Vice President Kamala Harris begins a 103-day sprint for the presidency in a virtual tie with former President Donald Trump, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, as her fresh candidacy was quickly reuniting a Democratic Party that had been deeply fractured over President Joe Biden.

Just days after the president abandoned his campaign under pressure from party leaders, the poll showed Democrats rallying behind Harris as the presumptive nominee, with only 14% saying they would prefer another option. An overwhelming 70% of Democratic voters said they wanted the party to speedily consolidate behind her rather than engage in a more competitive and drawn-out process.

Harris Reassembles the Democrat Party

Her swift reassembling of the Democratic coalition appeared to help narrow Trump’s significant advantage over Biden of only a few weeks ago. Harris was receiving 93% support from Democrats, the same share that Trump was getting from Republicans.

Overall, Trump leads Harris 48% to 47% among likely voters in a head-to-head match. That is a marked improvement for Democrats when compared with the Times/Siena poll in early July that showed Biden behind by 6 percentage points, in the aftermath of the poor debate performance that eventually drove him from the race.

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Trump leads Harris 48% to 46% among registered voters. He had led among registered voters by nine percentage points over Biden in the post-debate poll.

Harris was faring better among groups that Biden had been the weakest in, especially younger voters and nonwhite voters. At the same time, some Democrats fear she might not retain the same strengths that Biden has had among older voters, for whom the poll does show some erosion of Democratic support.

The poll showed Harris garnering about 60% support from voters younger than 30 and Hispanic voters, groups Biden had consistently struggled with. Among voters younger than 45, Harris was ahead by 10 percentage points, less than three weeks after Trump had held a narrow edge with that group over Biden.

Because the survey was of voters nationwide, the impact of Harris’ candidacy in particular battleground states was not immediately clear. But a Democratic candidate with greater appeal to younger and more diverse voters could put renewed focus on the Sun Belt states of Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, which had been threatening to slip off the swing-state map for Biden.

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Harris Is Expected Democrat Nominee

Harris has emerged as the Democratic Party’s expected nominee after a tumultuous few weeks. Biden stepped aside Sunday, following a month of drawn-out questions about his mental faculties following a poor debate performance at the end of June. In the interim, Trump escaped an assassination attempt, named Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate and formally accepted his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention.

Harris is on a glide path toward next month’s Democratic convention as she seeks to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to serve as a U.S. president.

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Harris faces some structural challenges as November approaches. She is the sitting vice president at a time when 75% of voters rated the nation’s economic conditions as “fair” or “poor.” And significantly more voters see Trump as a strong leader than those who say the same of Harris.

The country’s view of Harris has also brightened, with her favorable rating rising by 10 percentage points since February. Harris enters the campaign with a favorable rating of 46%, better than Biden’s, but still behind Trump’s.

Views of all three — Trump, Biden and Harris — split dramatically along gender lines. For the most part, men like Trump while women don’t. Women like Biden and Harris, while men don’t.

Trump Favorable Rating Went Up

Trump’s favorable rating ticked up to 48%. This comes not long after the indelible images of him rising to his feet after an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, pumping his fist in the air as blood streaked across his face, shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“Honestly the way he handled it after the fact, the way he pretty much stood up in defiance of what happened, kind of gave me that sense of pride that I hadn’t felt when it came to our country in a while,” said Eddie Otzoy, a 29-year-old contractor in Los Angeles, who had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, but is now backing Trump. “Once the assassination attempt happened, it made me feel like they wanted to shut him up for a reason.”

Nearly 90% of voters said they approved of Biden’s decision to exit the race, a view shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.

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Perhaps as a result, Harris has almost instantly united the party behind her, to a far greater degree than Biden had been able to in the last two years. Nearly 4 in 5 Democrats or voters who lean toward the Democratic Party said they would like to nominate her. In contrast, only 48% of Democrats had said they wanted Biden as the nominee just three weeks ago.

In a multicandidate race, less than a single percentage point separated Trump and Harris, with Harris at 44% and Trump at 43% after rounding.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s share of the vote continues to drop, hitting just 5% of likely voters in the new survey. He was the only third-party candidate above 1%.

Among Harris and Trump’s greatest strengths in the poll were that voters saw them as intelligent and having the right temperament to handle the job. Harris gets slightly higher marks for her smarts; 66% of voters say “intelligent” describes her well, compared with 59% for Trump.

Neither candidate holds an edge on the ability to unify the country, a sign that perhaps, in this era of deep political polarization, few believe national unity is even possible.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

by Shane Goldmacher, Ruth Igielnik and Camille Baker/Doug Mills
c.2024 The New York Times Company