Is Kamala Harris beating Donald Trump in the US election polls? | BBC Americast

Intro we're going to talk about the polls because the polls are interesting they are suggesting a real proper change in the way this race looks a change from Trump being really ahead in not only nationally but also in the swing States the ones where the election will be decided to Harris being not exactly ahead but on level pegging and that is a very big change it should change that the Democrats are celebrating it should change that Trump and his people are are worried about and they're saying they got their own polls they're going to see soon we have some very good polls coming out today I just heard despite all of the fake publicity about this radical left person from San Francisco how San Francisco doing not like not like North Carolina now we have some very good polls coming out so that's good you know con considering the fact that they what they do I mean what they do what the fake news is able to do and yet we're leading and let them have their convention and who knows how that's going to turn out okay so no fakery No Nonsense what are the polls actually telling us welcome to americast americast americast from BBC News hello it's Sarah here and I am back in the BBC's Washington Bureau and it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of americast in London England now Justin I don't think you're going to believe what I'm about to tell you I find it difficult to believe myself one month ago today I was in Milwaukee for the first day of the Republican National Convention and you'll remember well we talked all through that week about how ascendant Donald Trump looked after that assassination attempt how the party was jubilant it looked as though he was absolutely cruising to victory in November and in that one short month everything has turned on its head our americs know of course what's happened to Joe Biden stepped aside camea Harris assumed that nomination but none of us could have predicted just what an astonishing ride it's been of course she's up in the pools but the whole mood of the campaign has changed she's sunny and optimistic Donald Trump looks snarly and bad tempered suddenly she's the youthful candidate and she's the future and he looks a little bit oldfashioned and backward looking it's turned on its head Justin yeah someone was saying to me The Ghost of Frailty that the the ghost of uh Frailty was hanging over Biden andp Trump and eventually that ghost did for Biden but it hasn't left the stage it's doing now for Trump and I thought there was such an interesting point actually that the business of the two men being too old and just too out of touch with modern America has now has now turned into the business of one man being too old and out of touch with America and of course the big question is the reasons why uh all of those changes have have happened and how how certain we can be that Kamala Harris is ahead in the places and with the groups that would be really meaningful and mean that she has a a real chance of winning so there's there's an awful lot to unpack there is and when we look at the polls of course as we always warn there're a snapshot of where we are now not a prediction of what's going to happen in November but in a tumultuous time like this it's very important to do to look at where we are today and how voters are reacting to these huge changes H and we're going to unpick what they mean h Nationwide and usally what they mean in those key swing states that could Define the election but there's something else going on when you're here Justin that I think is really fascinating there's just a change in the mood and The Vibes as people keep talking about in this election campaign there's an enthusiasm about camela Harris there's a joyousness about this there is an atmosphere that I haven't witnessed in any election in any country since 2008 you and I were both here covering that Barack Obama election and there was something in the air that was completely different a joy and a positivity among his supporters now of course a reluctant vote for a candidate counts exactly the same as a really enthusiastic vote but that infectiousness can infect the whole of the campaign for the next three months and if it keeps up could make the difference so the big takeout from the The Big Take Away polls let's let's be clear about what we're talking about talking about two sets of polls it seems to me with kind of different um uh sets of importance there are the National polls there sort of snapshot of where the whole nation is uh and and they seem to be moving in CA Harris's favor and that is interesting although it doesn't necessarily put a a head in the actual race for the White House and the reason why that is of course all americs will know this is that in the end there are some swing States probably not that many of them where the result will be decided and you need to win in those swing States in order to get ahead and what's really interesting is not the national polls it's the swing state polls it seems to me that do suggest not that kamla Harris is firmly ahead but that in some of those key states she is now either level pegging or slightly ahead still in the margin of era and and that really matters it's a kind of it's it's the it's the it's the direction of travel isn't it Sarah that we're talking about exactly in some of those key swing states she is within the margin of error and she's like one two maybe three points ahead of Donald Trump that's a complete turnaround from where Joe Biden was because he was trailing Donald Trump in pretty much all of them in most polls and so she has moved five six points in three weeks that's significant now of course there is a a honeymoon element to this she's a new candidate fresh on the stage there's a a relief from a lot of democratic supporters that they don't have to hold their noses and vote for Joe Biden it remains to be seen if this can keep up but right now if she can this momentum continues for CA Harris it's all good news for her because of course you're right it's all about the key swing States 50 states vote in America only five or six of them matter because they're the ones that could go either for Harris or for Trump every other one is pretty much decided we already know that Texas and Florida are going to vote for Donald Trump we know that New York and California are going to vote for CA Harris and they're some of the biggest states in the nation it's some of the littlest ones that will make the difference it's Wisconsin it's Michigan it's Pennsylvania it's Arizona Nevada and North Carolina maybe Georgia they're the ones that we're focusing on because they're the only ones really where the result is in question and the The Polls other interesting thing about the poll so you've got the polls in those swing States and you've got the broad questions who do you support etc etc what do you think the important subjects are but then they ask questions too about the candidates and what really strikes me is the favorables for Kamala Harris really quite suddenly shooting up frankly without her having to do very much in other words It is Well exactly as you were saying Sarah it's about people's relief and enthusiasm for suddenly having a candidate any candidate and a kind of sense of being out from under the terrible rock that was the the former campaign and in a sense I'm I'm not sure that it's about kamla Harris herself it's it's just about it's a kind of relief rally isn't it yeah absolutely and I mean we're going to be talking to uh senior poster later in this episode who is going to be able to really unpack the det detail of this and what it means for both of the campaigns but I mean I think it also informs the the mood and the vibe and that's what camel Harris has been all about just now we've had almost no detail from her about what she would do she's not outlined the ways in which she's got the same policies as Joe bid the ways in which she's trying to differentiate herself she's just out there with a different tone and spreading some optimism among her followers is that enough to keep going till November who knows but as you can hear it's definitely working for now so Arizona I ask are you ready to make your voices heard do we believe in Freedom do we believe in Opportunity do we believe in the promise of America and are we ready to fight for it and when we fight we win God bless you and God bless the United States of America it's not exactly policy heavy is it Sarah no I mean who doesn't believe in the promise of America believe in opportunity and freedom but that's I mean it may be the genius of this campaign that it is so thin on detail I mean I have to say I have been skeptical you know americs have heard me saying this for a couple of years now that you know there's not very much there there with camela Harris that it she wouldn't necessarily be a strong candid it but we've got such a short campaign and such an appetite among voters for something different maybe this is all it takes and if she doesn't go into detail she can't be tripped up on it in In fairness to us The Surprise I mean we have said she's a she was a hopeless campaigner in in 2019 2020 and and when she was trying for the nomination and she she hasn't been particularly good at the political communication stuff while she was vice president we've been pretty down on her but only because the Democrats themselves have been I for goodness sake the White House has been I mean behind the scenes why is it that Joe Biden held on so long um they were telling people quite regularly telling people behind the scenes well CA Harris isn't really up to the job so that that in a sense the surprise is that once again actually I think it's worth saying once again it's the American public the voters leading the way and the political classes kind of having to catch up uh as they really did with Biden himself and with his Fitness for office uh and as they are it seems to me with CA Harris as well people are ahead of the game they just wanted someone who wasn't Biden and they're willing to this is on the Democratic side they're willing to to back them uh and it's a surprise frankly to the White House but I think it's also a surprise to the big wigs in the party and thing is it's not just the Democrats the Republicans also are completely blindsided by what is happening and can't yet find the right approach to it that's the crucial point an example Kelly an Conway very much part of Trump World spoke for him in the past is still very much part of his orbit um having a go on Fox News KLA Harris is just one big old blind date and everybody's making her whatever they need her to be she's so good-look she's so smart she's so wealthy she's so funny she's close to her mom she goes on really cool vacation she'll never break your heart everybody's making her what they need her to be she is defined to Define her is to deter her yeah to Define her is what the Trump campaign have been struggling to do and kellyan is very good at that kind of thing uh just to pick up on what you were talking about before Justin as well about her kind of invisibility as vice president for the last three and a half years we thought that that was a real weakness and showed she wasn't a strong campaigner now it's genius the reason that she's a blind date that people can project whatever they want onto her is because they know almost nothing about her so it's as though everything that's happened up to this St that we thought was liability now actually plays into her strengths and as Kelly anome was saying there Donald Trump doesn't seem to know what to do about it he talks as much about Joe Biden as he does about Cela Harris because he clearly he just really really misses him I think he wants to be fighting against Joe Biden and he can't quite believe that he managed to get rid of him and he hasn't worked out what his attacks on camela Harris are going to be is she crazy is she a radical left liberal is she ineffective was she covering up for um Joe Biden's cognitive decline he's just flailing around and he's making a mess of it he's got these disciplined people running his campaign that Justin you were referring to earlier and they don't seem to be able to contain him within a message it just it looks really The Economy messy yeah and you you hear that almost you hear that behind the scenes discussion when you hear him this this is him in North Carolina a few nights ago they wanted to do a speech on the economy a lot of people are very devastated by what's happened with inflation and all of the other things so we're doing this as a intellectual speech you're all intellectuals today today we're doing it and we're doing it uh right now and it's uh very important they say it's the most important subject I think crime is right there I think the border is right there personally uh we have a lot of important subjects because our country has become a third world nation we literally are a third world nation that's an internal party discussion to put it mildly that he's having in front of people isn't it it is saying that yeah he's been told to talk about the economy but he thinks crime and the Border are just as important now the economy should be a great line of attack for Donald Trump I mean there was news this week that the inflation rate has come down below 3% for the first time I think since Biden became president but I was out talking to voters about that yesterday and they're still Furious about the prices because the rate of increase of prices might have slowed but the prices are still going up up and they're shockingly high every time you go to the grocery store it's unbelievable what you end up paying H people are really angry about that and it had become wrapped up in this phrase bomic uh which the White House had coined to describe something else and it was really weighing around Joe Biden's neck somehow camela Harris doesn't seem to be getting the same level of blame for what's happened to the economy under the Biden Administration and she can possibly get away with it Donald Trump's not not managed to land it yet on Al inomics or whatever he's going to end up calling it just doesn't have the same salience yeah I mean there've been one The Trump Team or two quite good uh adverts it seems to me that they've stuck out online the Trump team uh where they have gone through the things that she has said in the past and also the things that they want to attach her to exactly as you say the things that the Biden White House that she's been part of have have done but but they've done it in the adverts they can't seem to do it with the candidate and I just wonder whether they have you know it's fair to say now the Republicans have a candidate problem essentially that that Trump is not able to deal with this new situation and in a sense it's it it is at The Vibes level it's it's nothing to do with with policy and it's nothing to do with the things that she has done or not done it's simply the fact that he's not the spotlight anymore and maybe you know it might have been one of the great errors of of Joe Biden's efforts to do Donald Trump down was this constant building up of him as a threat and as a as a figure that Americans should be worried about and frightened about and what was he going to do if he got back in ETC C Harris seems to he doesn't talk about that much she says occasionally that that they're weird um and and that they would be dangerous if they got into office but she's mostly just going around being herself and and that it seems to me is is in a sense the most frustrating thing for Donald Trump that it is no longer about him as it was when when Biden was around exactly no long about his power and strength which is what was being projected when Joe Biden said that Trump was a threat to American democracy camela Harris is laughing at him she's poking fun at him and God that's got to hurt a man who takes himself so incredibly seriously and you know we know his feelings about losers he is apparently currently losing and he's losing to a younger woman of black and South Asian descent he is livid about it you can't believe this is happening to him and it's bringing out all of his worst political instincts he's having a little personal temper tantrum on the public stage and that's just increasing the sense that he's losing that he's no longer defining this campaign he's no longer winning this campaign and it could just spiral into a defeat for him that's the direction it appears to be going now who knows if it'll last let's talk more about the The Swing States swing state poles now with someone who really knows about them we mentioned I think you mentioned Sarah the New York Times Sienna swing state poll is very well regarded uh people really hang on it whenever it comes out we can welcome now the polling editor of the New York Times Ruth agnik who has been a polling expert for many many years but is also um crucially very involved with that poll Ruth it's a real pleasure to have you on thanks for having me good to be here right okay so uh what are you telling us what is it telling us about the state of the race in those swing States yeah so we pulled the upper Midwestern swing States P Michigan Pennsylvania and wiconsin um and we found Harris doing quite well within the margin of error but up about four percentage points in each of those three states um which is the reversal from where things were when we pulled those States in May a and when you look at why that change has come are you able to tell us with any certainty about what has changed which groups have changed why people have felt differently about her now to how they felt about Biden in the past are you able to kind of to tell us a a broader story about what's going on yeah I mean I think the broader story right now is just Democratic enthusiasm Democrats are really excited about this new opportunity and you really see it in the poll now to be clear these are still early data points for Harris right there's still a long way to go before the race but in this early period what we're seeing are a lot of the kind of traditionally Democratic groups where Biden was struggling like younger voters black voters Latino voters Harris is doing quite well with those groups very similar to a more traditional Democrat so I think like really what this is is a lot of democratic enthusiasm they're excited about this new reset they're excited about this new opportunity and that's what's showing up so Ruth I'm fascinated by who it is that's Now sort of re-engaged and re-energized because kamla Harris has become the candidate those people that you're talking about young voters black voters they're people you would have expected to have come out for the Democratic party if Kamala Harris is going to win the president doesn't she need to reach Beyond those traditionally Democratic voting groups she absolutely does and I think anybody who is a serious poll Watcher right now would look at these polls and say on the one hand things are re-energized for Harris on the other hand she might not have enough support yet to really put things over the edge this to me looks like an extremely close race and Harris is not running away with it she does need to reach outside of these traditionally Democratic groups she does need to touch swing voters undecided voters all of those voters right now that's not necessarily showing up in the data there's still a long time before the fall um but to your earlier point about you know black voters Latino voters even though Biden was struggling with them he was still winning majorities of those groups um she's just running up the score with those groups which is how you kind of get to these bigger margins in some of these states and is there a trade-off the better she's doing with black and Latino voters who see a different kind of candidate in camela Harris are white workingclass voters for instance maybe going to be turned off by her because they saw Joe Biden as a a union man who was kind of one of them and maybe they won't see the same in uh candidate from California for instance yeah I mean it's hard to know and that's kind of like the race to Define Harris whether the Harris campaign can sort of meet some of the interests of those white working-class voters or whether the Trump Campaign Will Define her one thing we asked in this poll was whether or not Harris was too liberal or Progressive not liberal or Progressive enough or about right and more voters now say that she's too liberal or Progressive than said the Trumps attacks on Harris same thing about Biden when we asked in May so it's clear that some of that sort of early definition by the Trump campaign is seeping through and some voters think that she's a little too liberal so it'll be interesting to see if that continues well that's really interesting because that is then an opportunity isn't it if the Trump people are looking at it which they will be and thinking how do we attack her which they will want to do and they haven't done frankly very successfully so far that does suggest that those attacks saying this is a San Francisco liberal she will do things to this country that you will not like about all the kind of liberal Progressive causes from trans rights to I don't know what I mean the whole list of them that actually the polls suggest do they that that is fertile ground potentially for the Trump people if they can get to it yes yeah that's right yeah that's right and frankly I mean the Trump campaign is also they're trying a lot of different lines of attack right now as I'm sure you guys have talked about on your show but the other thing that they're kind of pushing hard is on immigration and that's a place where we see Trump running far ahead of Harris and another sort of fertile ground for growth yeah it's interesting though on some of those things when someone says to you I think uh Trump is much better on immigration than Harris it doesn't necessarily mean does it that they won't vote for Harris in other words you've got to be sophisticated haven't you about how you look at polls and and and you obviously are but explain how much we can extrapolate from someone telling us things are important to them and telling us they like one candidates view on this to actually coming down to who they're going to vote for because it's potentially different isn't it yeah and it could be quite different I think it's a good reminder that we as humans our decision-making is not binary we don't say I like her on immigration immigration is my only issue therefore I'll vote for her on immigration and we see this most acutely with abortion for example you have a lot of Voters that like Harris on abortion abortion is important to them and they're still voting for Trump because abortion isn't the most important issue to them so I think issues are crucially important to understand in the election but we can't use that as a proxy for vote and that's really important that's where people can kind of lose their way with polling so for example if you look at immigration right you have more voters in our poll in the upper Midwestern states saying that Trump is better on immigration you have a sizable share of Harris voters it's like 10% who say that Trump is better on immigration but they're still planning to vote for Harris and that's because maybe they think he's better on immigration but it's not the most important issue to them or they're other intangibles right like in this race there's a lot less focus on the issues than there have been in previous races there's a lot more about like personality and Vibes as they say now The Vibes are fascinating in this election Ruth and Justin and I were talking earlier uh about exactly that and about the enthusiasm that there currently is around the Harris campaign which may or may not last how much difference does that make I mean it doesn't matter how positively somebody votes for Harris it all counts the same in the end does enthusiasm actually change the nature of the race and how many votes somebody gets like right now there's a lot of enthusiasm and that's great I think there's a little bit of a honeymoon period I think it's going to fade the enthusiasm will stay but you're not winning new voters mostly with enthusiasm you're energizing your existing voters so the truth is that the campaign and and both sides are fairly sophisticated in their campaigning they understand that persuasion is just as important is turnout and so enthusiasm turns out your voters but you also need to be doing some persuasion you need to be winning some voters over to your sides both of those things are incredibly important for campaigns so enthusiasm is great and I think it gives the Harris campaign a boost in things like fundraising and volunteering but they sort of need to Parlay that into um persuasion in order to win more voters to their side Ruth is such a pleasure to talk to you thank you very much for sparing us the time thank you okay team that's all we got time for today all our episodes though are available on BBC sounds so if you want to hear more from the americaas podcast do go there that's it bye-bye americast americast from BBC News