"Surprising" New York Times poll shows Kamala Harris surge stall ahead of debate

For more than two months, Vice President Kamala Harris has led her party on a dizzying turnabout from despair to euphoria, with many Democrats believing that she was just the savior they needed to deliver them from former President Donald Trump. A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday confirms that Harris has improved upon President Joe Biden's performance, while also showing that, far from running away with the election, she remains locked in a dead heat with her GOP rival.

According to the poll of likely voters reached by cellphone, Trump leads Harris nationally by one percentage point, at 48-47, within the three-point margin of error. Their standing is largely unchanged from the last Times/Siena poll taken at the end of July, just after Harris replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket, an indication that Trump's support has not fractured despite a slew of bad headlines and increasingly fevered rhetoric from the former president.

Harris' momentum might also have been stalled by the fact that 28% of poll respondents are unsure of what to think of her or her positions, despite the vice president spending more than two months as the presumptive or official Democratic nominee. Two-thirds of those voters said they were eager to learn more about Harris' policies, which at least gives her potential room to grow her support.

Only 9% of respondents said they needed to know more about Trump, who is viewed unfavorably and seen as "risky" by a majority of voters in the poll. But among voters who have some opinion of both, Trump has significant advantages — when asked about their most important issue and then which candidate would better address it, respondents picked Trump over Harris across the board by an average of five points, and on the economy by 13 points. And nearly half of the respondents said that Harris was too far left on the political spectrum, while only one-third said Trump was too far right.

Furthermore, Trump is still seen by more voters as the "change" candidate, despite Democratic hopes that Harris' entry into the race would flip the narrative on its head — 61% of respondents said that Trump represented "change," while only 40% said the same for Harris, who while providing a fresher performance than Biden, has run on a largely generic Democratic platform targeted towards the "middle class" and casting a wide net over issues like fair prices, abortion and defending democracy. That might have been enough for her to claw back some support from traditional Democratic voters like women, young people and Latinos, but the poll finds that she is still below the usual levels of Democratic strength.

The poll might also provide some insight on what attacks have been working for Harris against Trump. Although the former president has tried to publicly disavow his ties to Project 2025, 71% of respondents who have heard of the right-wing policy blueprint believed that Trump would try to enact some of its policies, with 63% saying they opposed it. Voters also associated Trump closely with the Republican Party's efforts to restrict or ban abortion, with Harris winning on this issue among respondents by 15 points. Attacks on Trump's character and fitness, a staple of his political opponents since 2015, might not have landed — nearly half of Trump voters surveyed said the former president had said something they found offensive but that they would support him anyway.

The Times/Siena results diverge from other surveys taken so far this month, with Emerson, Morning Consult and YouGov recording a four-point, three-point and two-point lead for Harris, respectively. New York Times political analyst Nate Cohn wrote that the Times/Siena poll's findings, which show the first national lead for Trump in about a month, were "a bit surprising," but also suggested that it could be the first of several forthcoming polls that will show a settling of the race after an initial wave of party enthusiasm and largely positive media cycles. Harris, however, has a chance to give herself another positive media cycle if she performs well at the presidential debate Tuesday evening.