Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are neck and neck in a major new national survey with Election Day less than two months away.
According to a poll by The New York Times and Siena College, Trump is 48 percent to 47 percent in favor of Harris among likely voters, within the poll’s margin of error. The results are similar to a survey the pair took in July, right after President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid.
The vote comes ahead of Harris and Trump’s ABC News debate on Tuesday night, the only scheduled debate between the two candidates so far. And this debate could be even more crucial for the vice president: The poll found that 28 percent of likely voters said they need to know more about Harris, while 9 percent said they need to know more about Trump.
Additionally, 47 percent of likely voters thought Harris was too liberal, while 32 percent of likely voters thought Trump was too conservative.
The NYT/Siena survey is one of the few quality national polls that didn’t show the vice president taking even a slight hit after he quickly secured the nomination and coronation at the party’s nominating convention last month in Chicago.
As the Times notes, this is the first time Trump has at least a nominal lead in a “major nonpartisan national survey” in the last month or so. In The New York Times’ own poll averages, Harris has a slight lead over Trump, 49 percent to 47 percent. The Times poll has played a large role in American politics in recent years, often driving fundraising and news coverage more than any other national survey.
The survey was conducted among 1,695 registered voters between 3 and 6. September The poll’s margin of error is +/- 2.8 percentage points for likely voters.
