For the first time since Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race for the White House, she is trailing former President Donald Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.
Though Trump’s lead is a slim 0.1, overtaking Harris is a significant blow to the Democrat candidate’s struggling campaign.
Also for the first time, Harris led Trump in a Rasmussen survey. The pollster had consistently shown Trump ahead of Harris, often by several points.
And those numbers aren’t the only news that suggests Harris is in trouble. She’s rejected campaign help from none other than President Joe Biden, Axios reported yesterday.
The Numbers
As the RCP average goes, the bad news for Harris is that she prevailed in only seven of the last 16 polls. Most recently, CBS and Rasmussen put her one point ahead of Trump
Trump tied Harris in Sienna, CNN, TIPP and New York Times/Sienna polls, but, significantly, bested Harris in five others. A Wall Street Journal survey gave Trump a three-point lead, while a Forbes/Harris X poll put him two points head.
Thus, Trump is a shade ahead of Harris, again, at 0.1
The movement is significant because Harris was never behind Trump after the Democrat Ruling Elite removed President Joe Biden and installed Harris as its candidate.
In the 20 polls before the top 16, Harris won 16, tied two, and lost two. The two losses were Rasmussen surveys.
Prior to Harris’ entry into the race, Trump consistently led Biden, sometimes by as much as 11 points.
Yet Trump’s move ahead of Harris is significant not just for the numbers in the nationwide polls.
He was already ahead in all seven battleground states that Harris must win to carry the Electoral College.
As The New American reported last week, major election forecasters, including the prescient Nate Silver, predict a Trump victory next Tuesday.
“She’s Got a Problem”
In early October, Mark Halperin, formerly ABC News’s political director, said Harris was in dire trouble in swing states.
“What I’m telling you is happening in private polling is she’s got a problem,” he said, citing The Wall Street Journal.
Sources in both campaigns told Halperin that Harris is struggling mightily in all-important Pennsylvania.
“We all know from our contacts in both campaigns that Pennsylvania is tough for her right now,” he said:
And without Pennsylvania, there are paths, but there aren’t many. There’s no path without Wisconsin.… Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign poll shows Harris down three in Wisconsin. We all said yesterday, Wisconsin and Michigan are looking worse for Harris than before. Baldwin has Harris down three.
In Pennsylvania, Trump leads Harris by 0.5.
In fact, “very robust private polling,” Halperin said, “shows she’s in a lot of trouble.”
Halperin said that “Trump people and Democrats with data are extremely bullish on Trump’s chances in the last 48 hours, extremely bullish.”
Harris is in danger of losing Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia, he said, and Nevada is the only state Democrats believe Harris has locked up.
If the whole thing’s about the Electoral College, you take any of the — any of the Sun or the Rust Belt states away from her, it’s very difficult for her to win, very difficult. It’s not mathematically impossible, but it probably won’t happen if she loses any of them.
That prognosis, which didn’t bode well for Harris in early October, looks even more worrisome now, with Trump catching Harris in the RCP.
And, even if Harris regains the lead, she faces Trump’s power in the battleground states. Without them, defeating him is nearly a Sisyphean task.
Get Away, Joe
No wonder Harris “stiff-armed” Biden, as Axios put it.
“President Biden wants to campaign for Vice President Harris in the last days before the election,” the website reported citing three insiders, but “Harris’ campaign keeps responding: ‘We’ll get back to you.’”
The reason: Biden is extremely unpopular, with only 39 percent approval on FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls.
That means 61 percent disapprove.
Those figures comport with the RCP’s average of Biden’s job approval rating: 56.6 of those polled approve; only 40.8 percent approve.
“He’s a reminder of the last four years, not the new way forward,” another source told the website, referring to Harris’ dopey campaign slogan.
But Biden, Axios continued, seems unfazed by the snub, and keeps pushing to join Harris on the road.
Biden thinks he can help Harris with working-class white voters in Pennsylvania, and keeps pushing his nose in the campaign like the crazy uncle interjecting himself in the Thanksgiving dinner conversations.
“Biden’s team — responding to the president’s wishes — recently has become more assertive,” Axios disclosed:
Biden’s announcement this past week that he would campaign solo in Pittsburgh this weekend caught many on Harris’ team off-guard, two people familiar with the matter told Axios.
Biden also caught the Harris team off guard when in New Hampshire he said “we gotta lock [Trump] up,” which played into his campaign’s narrative that Biden weaponized his Justice Department to put Trump in jail.
On top of all that, add one more indicator of trouble for Harris: The far-left Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have refused to endorse her, a sign that their owners believe a Harris presidency would be disastrous.
