Sun Belt states look more competitive for Harris, according to new polls

Vice President Kamala Harris is coalescing support for her campaign over former President Donald Trump in four critical Sun Belt states that were previously slipping away from President Joe Biden, according to New York Times/Siena College polling published Saturday.

The polls were fielded Aug. 8-15 and surveyed likely voters in Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia about their attitudes toward Harris and Trump. When asked who they’d vote for if the election were held today, Harris and Trump both averaged 48 percent across the four states. The shape of the race did not change significantly when third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were included, with the controversial independent earning the support of just 4 percent of likely voters across the Sun Belt.

In Arizona, Harris has 50 percent support to Trump’s 45 percent. In Nevada and North Carolina, the candidates are almost neck and neck, with Harris leading 49 percent to 47 percent in North Carolina and 49 percent to 48 percent in Nevada. And in Georgia, Trump leads Harris by 4 percentage points, with 50 percent support to Harris’ 46 percent.

Compared with previous Times polling in May , those results indicate that Harris is putting a wider swath of the country into battleground territory compared to Biden, who dropped out of the race in July after facing collapsing support in swing states and dampened enthusiasm among Democrats who grew concerned about his electability. In May, when the Times last polled voters in Sun Belt states — but did not survey in North Carolina — Trump was up against Biden by an average of nearly 10 percentage points of support in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.

Harris, by contrast, appears to have remade the race by energizing as many Democrats about her candidacy as Trump has excited Republicans about his — 65 percent of Harris supporters say they are least somewhat enthusiastic about voting, compared to 68 percent of Trump backers. The results paint a similar picture to last week’s Times polling of the Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where Harris had seized a slight advantage over Trump.

And she is opening up leads among demographic groups that will be critical to Democrats’ success this November. Across the four Sun Belt states surveyed by The Times, Harris leads by 14 percentage points among women, 16 percentage points among 18-to-29-year-old voters and 3 percentage points among independents — a critical voting bloc that Trump was previously holding onto by a larger margin against Biden. Harris’ support is also driven by having the backing of 84 percent of Black voters and 54 percent of Hispanic voters, two groups that Trump had tried to make inroads with when facing Biden.

And Trump’s advantage over Harris on key issues for his campaign, like immigration and the economy, may not be as vast as he claims. Across the four Sun Belt states polled, 53 percent of likely voters think he’d handle immigration better than Harris, while 44 percent trust Harris more. Trump holds a 12 percentage point advantage in trust to handle the economy, but Harris has a 15 percentage point advantage on abortion, an issue she’s championed persistently since the 2022 midterms. The polls were in the field before Harris announced a populist economic platform in North Carolina on Friday.

Even though Harris has reshaped the electorate with just under 80 days until the election, it’s an open question as to whether she can sustain the strength that she’s enjoyed since launching her campaign nearly a month ago — drawing bigger crowds than Biden had during his 2024 campaign in swing states, enjoying a sustained wave of earned media and overwhelming social media with memes and positive video clips.

The Trump campaign insists she’s in a “honeymoon period” — and the Times polling suggests that the Republican nominee maintains some advantages on how he is perceived on some traits among voters. For example, while nearly identical shares of likely Sun Belt voters think Harris and Trump will bring about the right kind of change and are qualified for the presidency, 54 percent believe, at least somewhat, that Harris flip-flops on issues that matter, compared to 47 percent who say the same of Trump. 57 percent of likely voters believe Trump can be labeled a strong leader, while 50 percent say so for Harris. Those weaknesses could play into Trump’s often scattershot attempts to dub Harris a “chameleon,” question her race and undermine her intellect.

But Harris’ momentum appears to be a rising tide that’s also lifting Democratic candidates down-ballot further above water. In Arizona’s marquee Senate race, Rep. Ruben Gallego is up by nine percentage points against Trump-backed Republican and former news anchor Kari Lake . In Nevada, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen leads her Republican challenger, Army officer Sam Brown, by the same margin. And North Carolina state Attorney General Josh Stein is ahead of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee, by 10 percentage points in a critical governor’s race.

The New York Times/Siena College polls surveyed 2,670 likely voters from Aug. 8 to 15 with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points in Arizona, plus or minus 5.1 percentage points in Georgia, plus or minus 4.8 percentage points in Nevada and plus or minus 4.7 percentage points in Nevada.

As with last week’s New York Times/Siena College polls in the Rust Belt states, the Trump campaign in a memo sent to reporters Saturday morning singled out the results in Arizona and Nevada, where poll respondents self-reported voting for Biden over Trump in 2020 at greater rates than the actual electorate did four years ago. Some pollsters have started adjusting their numbers to replicate the 2020 election results, but the Times says doing so would have actually made their previous polling less accurate.