Vice President Kamala Harris has a higher approval rating among New York voters than former President Donald Trump in the race for the White House, according to a new poll released Tuesday.
A Siena College poll showed Harris leading Trump in New York state, 53% to 39%, a 14-point margin.
It will be the first head-to-head poll in New York state between Harris and the Republican presidential nominee since Vice President Harris assumed the top spot on the Democratic ticket after the unpopular 81-year-old incumbent Biden announced he would not seek reelection.
A Siena poll released in late June found Biden leading Trump by just eight points, 47% to 39%.
In the six-way race, Harris is leading Trump 49% to 37%, with Robert Kennedy Jr. on 7% and the three other minor party candidates on 4%.
“Things have changed since the last Siena College poll, and the changes in the top Democratic candidates, while not dramatic, have had a noticeable impact on the race,” Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said.
Polls show Harris has rallied the Democratic base.
She outperformed Biden among women and black voters and held her own against Trump in key suburban and northern states, which is good news for Democrats vying for power in key House races.
Harris has the support of 86% of Democrats, up from 75% for Biden in June.
Ms Harris won the support of 81% of black voters to Mr Trump’s 11%, up from 59% for Biden and 29% for Trump in June.
Harris outscores Trump among independent voters, 47% to 40%, but Trump leads Biden among independents, 45% to 28%, and Harris has cut Trump’s lead among independents by more than half.
Here’s the latest on Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign.
Harris leads among women by 34 points (64% to Trump’s 30%), nearly doubling the gender gap.
Among women, Biden beat Trump, 51% to 33%.
“With Harris replacing Biden, the gender gap has widened,” Greenberg said.
Among male voters, Trump leads with 49% to Harris’ 43%, roughly the same 46% to 42% advantage the former Republican president had over Biden.
The former president also showed strong support among traditionally Democratic Jewish and Hispanic voters, with the Jewish vote split between Harris (50% to 49%) and Hispanic voters (47% to 48%).
“Interestingly, it wasn’t young voters who brought about the change. [for Harris]Among voters under 35, Harris leads 49-34%, down slightly from Biden’s 51-32% lead in June. Harris’s biggest gains are among voters ages 35-54, who supported Trump over Biden 44-41% in June but now support Harris 54-40%,” Siena’s Greenberg said.
In New York City, a Democratic-majority state, Harris won by a landslide with 67% of the vote to Trump’s 25%.
More importantly, Harris is also toppling Trump in the suburbs, 47% to 47%.
This is a positive for Democrats, given that a June Siena College poll showed Trump beating Biden in the suburbs by 13 percentage points.
Many of the key battlegrounds in the congressional elections are in suburban areas, such as Long Island, Westchester County, Rockland, Putnam and Orange counties.
In the northern part of the state, 47% of voters supported Harris and 45% supported Trump, making it a nearly even race.
“This is good news for Democrats running in close districts,” Greenberg said.
In the House of Representatives elections, 47% of suburban voters support the Democratic candidate and 44% support the Republican candidate, but the results are close.
Similarly, 44% of northerners support a Democrat for Congress, while 42% support a Republican, making the numbers evenly split.
In heavily Democratic New York, 53% of voters have a favorable view of Harris, while 43% have an unfavorable view.
By contrast, 59% of respondents had an unfavorable view of the New York-born Trump, while 39% had a favorable opinion.
A majority of voters say this presidential election is the most important election of their lifetime: 79% of Democrats, 77% of Republicans and 65% of independents.
In another key race, incumbent Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, running for a third six-year term, is leading Republican candidate Mike Supply-Corn, a former New York City police detective, by 23 points (56% to 33%).
“With just 13 weeks until Election Day, Gillibrand is well positioned to win her fourth election to the United States Senate,” Greenberg said.
She won reelection in 2018 by 34 points over a little-known Republican opponent.
The survey found that 85% of voters don’t know enough about Supplicone to form an opinion, and 27% have no opinion of Gillibrand, who has been in office for 15 years.
The Siena College poll was conducted among 1,199 voters via smartphone and landline phones from July 28 to Aug. 1. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
