2 new polls show Harris surging past Trump in New Hampshire

Democrats and independents are rallying behind Harris in the Granite State.

As Vice President Kamala Harris completes her first week essentially atop the Democratic ticket, she is surely receiving good news from the Granite State. Two new polls show her taking six-point leads over former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire, amid a surge in enthusiasm following Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and endorse Harris.

A University of New Hampshire poll found that 49% of likely voters in the state say they would vote for Harris if the election were held today, while 43% would vote for Trump. Another poll, conducted by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center, found that Harris leads Trump 50% to 44% among registered voters.

Harris has yet to officially lock up the Democratic nomination, but a majority of the party’s delegates have pledged to support her, as have the most famous and influential Democrats. Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle officially endorsed her Friday morning.

While there had been some buzz about an open process to replace Biden in the weeks before he dropped out, Democrats quickly coalesced around Harris. A total of 78% of New Hampshire Democrats said that they would prefer Harris to be the party’s nominee, according to the UNH poll. The Saint Anselm poll found that 94% of Democrats are supporting Harris, compared to the 82% that were supporting Biden in June.

“Harris has achieved a level of partisan enthusiasm that Biden did not, especially among the liberal base,” Executive Director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics Neil Levesque said in a release accompanying the Saint Anselm poll results. “As Harris takes the lead in the campaign, shifts in voter perceptions are expected to continue.”

Harris has not come to New Hampshire since becoming the presumptive nominee. But Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a popular Democrat who many see as a potential future presidential candidate herself, campaigned for Harris in Durham on Thursday.

Harris is also showing momentum in national polls. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll found Trump to be leading Harris by one percentage point among likely voters. Biden was down by six points to Trump in the previous version of the poll.

Harris unwaveringly campaigned for Biden in the weeks following his catastrophic debate performance, even as Democrats mounted a pressure campaign to get the 81-year-old to pass the torch. Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign and her first few years as vice president were perceived as rocky, but the last five months have shown her ability to win over Americans.

Overall, 46% of registered voters have a favorable view of her, which is up from 36% in February, according to the NYT/Siena poll. There is now 49% of voters that have an unfavorable view of her, which is down from 54% in the winter.

In New Hampshire, Harris is not widely popular but does have higher favorability ratings than Trump, Biden, or Trump’s running mate JD Vance. The UNH poll found that 39% of voters have a favorable opinion of Harris, compared to 37% for Trump, 32% for Biden, and 30% for Vance.

Voters appear to have decided their thoughts on Trump, one way or the other. In June, the Saint Anselm poll found that he had about the same favorability rating as he does now. He has not lost support, but rather Harris has consolidated some of the voters that had abandoned Biden. Trump led Biden by 44% to 42% in June, and Harris has improved over Biden by taking four points from minor candidates and 4 points from people who said they were “unsure” of who they would vote for.

Throughout July, Biden’s standing slipped so much that some Democrats reportedly worried that New Hampshire could be won by Trump in November. The state has not gone red since 2000, but Trump came within half a percentage point of winning it in 2016. Overall, 47% of voters said they felt “relieved” after learning that Biden would withdraw from the race, according to the UNH poll. It found that 22% of Democrats were “happy” when they heard the news, compared to 25% of Republicans who felt the same.

Since Biden’s announcement, some Republicans have called on him to also resign the presidency. Overall, 57% of New Hampshire voters think he should “definitely” or “probably” not resign before the end of his term, compared to 31% who think he “definitely” or “probably” should resign. Biden himself has explicitly said that he intends to finish out his term in the White House.