Who has the momentum in the latest presidential polls? Data reporter Harry Enten breaks it down

We have new polling showing Harris gaining ground on Trump in some key Sunbelt states. CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten is running the numbers for us. And Harry, we've got some new numbers out today. What do you make of them? Tight, tight, tight. That's what I make of it. Let's take a look at the four states that New York Times Siena College poll polled over the past week. And I want you to take a look at the key in the yellow, all within the margin of error so we can have Kamala Harris up by five points in Arizona, Georgia, Trump up by four. Nevada, Trump up by one. And in North Carolina, where Democrats want to play, you see Kamala Harris up to their bottom line is two states where Trump is ahead. Two states where Harris is ahead, but all within the margin of error. Tight, tight, tight. Now, what's key here is who would you rather be in this situation? Who has the momentum? And I want you to take a look at these states in the aggregate. All right. This is the Democrat versus Donald Trump, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. You go back to November of 2020 across these four states, Biden and Trump were essentially tied. But in May of 2024, look at that. Look at that advantage that Donald Trump held in these states. He was up by nine points over Joe Biden. Now, in August of 2024, we've got that tied race again. So what we have right now is essentially the same picture in aggregate that we had back in November of 2020. And, of course, Joe Biden won that year. So the bottom line is, Kamala Harris, with momentum, you'd rather be her than Donald Trump. If we're projecting this out nationally, but it is way too close to call in the Sun Belt states. Jessica and Harry, what groups are helping Harris close the deficit that Biden had and close this gap? Yeah. What are the groups? Well, if you know anything about the Sunbelt, you know that Georgia and north Carolina have a lot of black voters in them. Arizona, Nevada have a lot of Hispanic voters in them. All right. So this is a vote choice across the Sunbelt swing states among likely voters. Look at how much better Kamala Harris is doing now than Joe Biden was doing back in May. She's getting 84% of the black vote. Joe Biden was just getting 74% of it back in May. How about Hispanics? It's basically the same story. Look at this. Kamala Harris is getting 54% of that vote now compared to Joe Biden, just getting 47% back in May. I will note that Harris is still actually somewhat underperforming. What Joe Biden did with these two groups back in 2020, but she's doing significantly better than he was doing back in May. And what does the poll tell you about the different ways that Harris and Trump are talking about the economy, which, of course, is the issue Americans say they care about the most? Yeah, economy, economy, economy. So this is rather interesting. All right. So this is the Harris versus Trump margin in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina. Look at this. Donald Trump holds an advantage and who who voters trust more on the economy. Look at that. He leads Harris by 12 points. But interestingly enough, this is a question that I really don't think pollsters say nearly enough, which is who cares about people more like you? Look at this. Harris holds a five point advantage on that. You go back to 2012, Mitt Romney won on the economy, but Barack Obama won that election because he won on this question, cares about people like you. And Harris right now is leading on this. Less of a lead than Trump has on the economy. But right now, I think voters are balancing these two thoughts in their head. And that's why we have such a close race across the Sunbelt battlegrounds. All right. So let's zoom out. Now that we have this new data where it is the race of the 270 Electoral College votes, Stan. Right. So, you know, last week, The New York Times released polls from the Northern battleground states in the Great Lakes. And this weekend, they released them across the Sunbelt. If The New York Times polls are exactly right. Exactly right. Of course, there's a margin of error. We'll get to that in the second. Kamala Harris will get 297 electoral votes, more than the to 70 she needs to win because she could win up here in the Great Lakes battleground states. She'd also went down here in North Carolina and Arizona, lose in Nevada and in Georgia. So if the polls are exactly right, she's ahead. But of course, these polls come with a margin of error. And this race, in my opinion, is very too much close to call. Why is that? Because if we look within The New York Times poll's margin of error, you could actually find that Donald Trump could get 312 electoral votes winning up here in the Great Lakes, winning in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. So bottom line is, as we head into the Democratic National Convention. Yes. You'd rather be Kamala Harris, then you would be Donald Trump. As you see here, this is sort of the median projection. But the bottom line is a Donald Trump victory is well within the margin of error Jessica. All right. Harry Enten, as always, breaking the numbers down for us. Thank you very much. Thank you. And joining me now, CNN political analyst and White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Laura Barron-lopez and Stuart Stevens. He's the senior adviser to the Lincoln Project and also author of the book The Conspiracy to End America Five Ways My Old Party is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy. Thanks to both of you for being here on a Saturday night with us. Stuart, let's start first with you. Harry just walked us through these numbers. It is a very tight race as we look at those key swing states. We're heading into the DNC next week. What do you think the Harris campaign needs to do to keep their momentum? Well, look, just one note about this. As far as the African-American vote that's showing an 84% for Harris. Harris is going to get 92% of that vote. In 1964, Goldwater got 7% of the black vote in 19. In 2020, Trump got 8%. That's one point every 56 years. That's not going to change. So when you're projecting out these numbers, you really need to factor that in. I've seen this so many times in polling. I can't tell you how many times I've seen my candidate Republicans doing better to African-Americans before the election. But I can tell you how many times we got north of 9%, and that was never I think this race right now is the trend is your friend and you want to be. Harris in this race and Trump doesn't have a message. I think the major challenge for the Harris campaign is not to run this like a normal campaign. Donald Trump is a criminal. Donald Trump is a sexual predator. You need to run against him. You can't run against him on the economy or something like this is a rematch of Obama. Romney. You have to frame this race now. You need to talk about the economy. But this isn't going to be a race about the economy. I think I think it's going to be a referendum on Donald Trump and who you can look to and with pride in the White House. And it's not going to be a guy who's a criminal. And, Laura, we know that the former president will be holding counterprogramming next week during the DNC with he's going to have these rallies in Pennsylvania and Michigan, of course, two very key battleground states. How do you think that will go for him? And what do you think the campaign is going to be trying to achieve? What's the best case scenario for them as the Democrats have their big week next week? You know? Well, look, they've. Been Oh, I'm sorry, Stuart. I'm going to let Laura answer that one. So we'll come back to you. Yeah, I'm curious to see what Stuart has to say on this as well. But ultimately, Trump's campaign is trying to blunt Harris's momentum, find anything that they can do to stop it, because right now, Democrats in the Harris campaign are expecting that coming out of the DNC, they will have another little boost, that it'll just add to the momentum that she has and I'm on the ground here in Chicago already. And, you know, a lot of the voters that I've talked to, yes, they're in Illinois and it's not a swing state, but they just talk all the time about how much the vibes of this election have shifted. And it already felt like a vibes election before now, especially since voters didn't really respond to some of the good economic numbers previously. And so it felt like a vibe session to voters and that's why they were more leaning Trump prior to President Biden dropping out of the race. And so Harris is trying to add to the to add to the momentum that she has right now. And Trump, you know, after not being out on the campaign trail for about a week ago for a whole week, he's now trying to really get out there in those battleground states and siphon off voters at the margins, whether it is black voters or whether it is Latino voters. And I take Stuart's point that historically black voters vote Democratic, a vast majority of them, more than 80%. But there is some concern among some of the Democrats that I'm talking to about just at the margins, whether or not black men specifically will are still curious about Trump or if Harris is actually helping bring some of them home. And Stuart, let's get your thoughts on all of that. Look, if I was advising Donald Trump, God forbid, I would say just stay out of the way. Next week I've been in the situation where it's the other teams convention. I don't think there's anything you can do that's going to break through that. You're going to have whatever you create is going to be a bad split screen for you. You can't be in any kind of audience like they're going to have at the convention, any kind of set up like that. And, you know, Trump is not helping himself when he campaigns now. He has these speeches. They're supposed to be about the economy. And it goes into these attacks and it goes on and on. I mean, this guy is like Fidel Castro. And that's the problem inside this campaign that you can come up with all the good strategies. You look at the speech that they wrote for him to give us his acceptance speech. Then look at the speech to be actually gave. And that is the problem with the Trump campaign. And it's the candidate and J.D. Vance only reinforce the worst aspects of Donald Trump. He's the ultimate MAGA candidate. And I think that this is a problem they have that they have no idea how to deal with.