With less than 100 days left in the election cycle, Kamala Harris’ campaign launch has injected new energy into her party and raised hopes of Democrats winning in battleground states that once seemed irretrievably lost to Donald Trump, according to a series of notes provided exclusively to the Guardian.
Among Democratic battleground states, Harris’ campaign has raised a record $200 million and seen a dramatic increase in donations and volunteer sign-ups over the past week, according to the memo.
They are New polls show Harris closing the gap on Trump in six of the seven battleground states. Her approval ratings have been sagging since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of likely voters conducted July 24-28 showed Harris leading Trump by two points in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, and by 11 percentage points in Michigan. Trump led Harris by four points in Pennsylvania and two points in North Carolina, and the two candidates were neck and neck in Georgia.
A memo shared by Harris’ joint campaign for president and the Democratic National Committee offers an even more encouraging sign for the vice president.
In Georgia, where Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by just 12,000 votes, or 0.2 percentage points, in 2020, more than 1,000 new volunteers registered within 24 hours of Harris announcing her candidacy, the most ever registered in a single day during a campaign. The Georgia Democratic Party also raised $200,000, a 320% increase in donations to the state party from the previous week.
The show of force was notable given that previous polls had shown Trump with a solid lead in Georgia. vote A poll conducted earlier this month showed Trump ahead of Biden by five points, 44% to 39%, but the outlet’s latest investigation It showed Harris cutting that lead to two points.
“Democrats are enjoying unprecedented support from voters across the country,” said Avi Rahman, deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee. “In these battleground states, we are confident Democrats will win at every level in the November election.”
The pattern was also evident in other states where Trump’s lead over Biden appears to be growing weeks after Trump’s disastrous debate defeat. In Arizona, where Biden won by about 10,000 votes, or 0.3 percentage points, in 2020, more than 2,000 new Democratic campaign volunteers registered in the past week. Emerson College poll A poll conducted last month showed Harris narrowing Trump’s lead in Arizona from 10 points to 5 points.
In Wisconsin, a key battleground state that Biden won by 0.6 percentage points in 2020, the state party raised $400,000 in the past week after outraising Republicans by a 14-to-1 margin earlier this year.
Wisconsin Democrats have signed up 3,500 new volunteers since Harris entered the race, and more than 2,000 Wisconsin volunteers completed shifts in the past week, contacting at least 175,000 voters — efforts that could prove decisive in a state decided by about 20,000 votes four years ago.
Before Biden dropped out of the race this month, most polls had him in a close race with Trump in Wisconsin. But what’s particularly worrying is investigation An AARP poll conducted a few days after the debate gave Trump a 6-point lead in Wisconsin, and a new Emerson College poll showed Harris and Trump tied in Wisconsin, 47% to 47%.
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Harris’ campaign launch also appears to have energized grassroots donors, some of whom are donating for the first time in this election. Of the $200 million raised by the Harris campaign, 66% have come from first-time donors. In Michigan, which Biden won by about 3 points in 2020, the state party reported a surge in small-dollar donations over the past week, raising $100,000 from more than 1,000 individual donors. The latest Emerson College poll shows Michigan remains very close, with Trump at 46% and Harris at 45%.
Democrats hope the financial support will help them regain their financial advantage in presidential elections after the collapse of the Trump administration. Closed Ms. Harris has closed her previous gap with Mr. Biden thanks to a fundraising blitz in recent months, and her campaign is already using the new money to fund a $50 million advertising push in the weeks leading up to next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
But Trump isn’t sitting idly by. On Tuesday, his campaign released a new ad attacking Harris over the Biden administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border, calling the vice president “weak” and “dangerously liberal.”
The rival ads were a sign that the presidential race will be a close one until the very end. With early voting in many states starting in late September or early October — in Arizona, for example, early voting begins on October 9 — the time for both candidates to resonate with voters is even shorter than it might seem.
