Whoa: Trump Hits 52% in New Harvard/Harris Poll

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Say, whose honeymoon is this, anyway? Supposedly, Kamala Harris has "totally upended" the race with The Anointment and the media's rush to proclaim the advent of "Kamalot." Also, Donald Trump only has a ceiling in the mid-40s and can't possibly win an outright popular-vote majority, especially with such a Historic Candidate™ as an opponent.

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Or so analysts thought. According to a new Harvard-Harris CAPS poll, Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris 52/48 with leaners, and 48/45 without. Harris has improved Joe Biden's numbers on the latter, but not the former:

Even the unsure voters are breaking toward Trump, at least somewhat. The more worrisome data for Democrats are in the charts below, however. Trump holds Republicans to the ticket better than Harris holds her own party in both formulations. In fact, her 87% without leaners should be a red flag for the DNC, suggesting strongly that the party is not as sold on The Anointing as the media claims, even with the full-court press on Kamalot! 

Take a look at the indie numbers, too. Trump leads by six points without leaners -- and six points with leaners. One has to wonder whether the sample tilts a bit toward the Dems based on those results plus the party loyalty numbers above. If so, Trump's still scoring an outright majority over Harris, who's attractiveness as a candidate is at its zenith before she's forced to open her mouth about policy.

In the next slide down, we see even more demographic red flags ahead for Harris and the Dems. Trump leads by 12 among men and only trails by four among women 44/48. Trump also wins an astounding 25% of the black vote and 44% of the Hispanic vote, which is slightly lower than in some other polling. 

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Before we get to issues, one more worrisome result for Democrats: they only have a +3 in the generic congressional ballot without leaners, when anything less than a +5 usually means losses in the House and Senate. And when leaners get added to the mix, it becomes a +4 for the GOP.

What may be causing this Trump Bump? The issue set clearly favors Republicans now. The top three issues for respondents in this survey when asked in an open-ended manner are inflation (37%), immigration (33%), and the economy and jobs (27%). When asked to specify which single issue impacts respondents the most, 45% chose inflation and 14% chose immigration. Harris' pet issue, abortion, comes in tied for third with crime at 10%. Except possibly on jobs, where the data has been surprisingly cheery this year, Harris has to play defense on the issues mattering most to voters in this cycle -- and Harris is not talented at defense.

One other trend to watch is favorability. Both Harris and Trump managed to zero out their unfavorable ratings in this poll (47/47 and 48/48, respectively), so that's a wash on personal approval. However, the GOP edges the Democrats in party favorability (47/45), which is likely impacting both the presidential and congressional polling. Most importantly, voters have reconsidered Trump's presidency in light of what followed it:

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With the right/wrong direction result at 30/61, one can easily understand why voters may be ready to give Trump's term in office a Strange New Respect.

At any rate, Harris may have upended something, but it's not this race. It's the assumptions of Trump as too flawed a candidate to beat a supposedly fresh and younger face -- and that won't improve as Harris gets more and more scrutiny as a candidate, either. 

Update: For what it's worth, one of our commenters accurately notes that Harvard-Harris has given Trump some good numbers against Biden too. The forced H2H numbers were also above 50%. But some of that was presumed to be attributable to Biden's weakness and obvious cognitive issues, and Kamala Harris was supposed to solve those issues. It looks more like Trump earned those numbers all along. 

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