Kamala Harris favorability surge is most since Bush after 9/11

Harris leads the former president and Republican nominee by 49% to 44%, which falls within the margin of error, in an NBC News poll conducted Sept. 13-17. She leads Trump 52% to 48% in a Sept. 18-20 CBS/Ipsos poll, conducted entirely after the apparent assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida golf course on Sept. 15.

Harris’ overall favorability has gained 16 percentage points in NBC’s polling compared to before she entered the presidential race in July. Just 32% of registered voters said they viewed the vice president in a positive light at the time, compared with 48% in the latest survey.

The network said it’s the largest increase any candidate has had in its polling since then President George W. Bush’s approval rating rose in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US.

While Election Day is Nov. 5, early voting has already started in Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota. It will extend to several more states through October.

Harris’ late entry as the Democratic nominee propelled a once-monotonous race that has since been turned on its head. A disastrous debate showing by President Joe Biden in late June led to his exit from the race, with Harris’ entry quickly erasing Trump’s lead.

Yet victory in the presidential election is likely to depend on the outcome in a limited number of battleground states. 

CBS rated all of the seven key swing states in its polling model as tossups, with Harris holding an edge within the margin of error in all but two. Both candidates and their allies have been seeking to mobilize voters in key states for the final six weeks of the campaign.

“This election is going to be close,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat whose state is among the battlegrounds, said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. 

“We have always known that,” she said. “And in a state like Michigan or Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, we know that this is going to be a close race.” 

On the economy, widely viewed as one of her political liabilities, Harris narrowed her deficit in the CBS poll among voters who care most about the issue. Trump leads Harris 53% to 47% in that subset of voters, compared with 56% to 43% in August.

Asked about the intent of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, 65% said it was to make people fearful of migrants and 63% said the stories were probably false.