Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck-and-neck in key swing states. That’s according to a new poll by the Cook Political Report and the bipartisan team of BSG and GS Strategy Group, published by The New York Times. The polls, conducted July 26-Aug. 2, show Harris with a narrow or even lead among likely voters in six of seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump, however, has a slight lead in Nevada.
That’s a stark change from the same polls in May, which showed Trump with a solid lead or a tie in all seven swing states. The reversal in North Carolina is particularly stark, The New York Times noted. In May, Trump had one of his biggest advantages in that state, and now the candidates are neck and neck. The new polls also suggest that third-party candidates may have less of an impact. The inclusion of candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent, and Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, did not change the overall results in key states. The results are similar to recent New York Times/Siena College polls that showed Harris with a slight lead in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and are another indicator of how the presidential race has reopened in just a few weeks. The Cook polls, conducted shortly after Joe Biden dropped out of the race, show Harris’s numbers increasing by 13 percentage points as voters come to recognize her as the new Democratic nominee. The poll also adds that undecided voters, a relatively small segment of the electorate, trust Trump more on economic policy and border security, and are more wary of inflation than voters overall.